


Bit Bang Theory

by manic_intent



Category: GoldenEye (1995), James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M!Silva, M/M, Q will resort to drastic measures not to have to have to live in London, Silly fic warning, That AU where Silva is the new M, and 006 will always owe James a huge favour for this shit, and has an allergy to bad fashion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:50:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In James' broad experience with life to date, something was usually about to become an utter disaster if 006 became excited about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Bit Bang Theory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6301474) by [littledoctor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledoctor/pseuds/littledoctor)



> For my friends, whose relentless shipping of 00S seems to have sucked me out of the 00Q fandom, oh well. I originally saw this idea on tumblr - someone asked for a fic where Silva was M. Here you go, guys...

I.

In James' broad experience with life to date, something was usually about to become an utter disaster if 006 became excited about it.

"I don't see how this is anything new," James said, pointedly disinterested and pretending to read one of the reports on his desk, "New Ms always bring in their own personal staff."

"Weren't you listening?" Alec frowned at him from where he was slumped into a spare chair, pulled up opposite James' desk, "He didn't bring any personal staff. He brought a new Q-branch. Got rid of the existing one." 

James blinked. Q-branch _had_ been a shadow of its former self after the retirement of Major Boothroyd, the previous Q who had been a fixture in MI6 for as long as anyone could remember, but- "That seems drastic."

"And all of the new members of Q-branch look as though they'd possibly only just graduated from University, if at all," Alec added, "Moneypenny said that they're mainly a team of hackers."

"You're addicted to gossip, Alec."

"The new Q," Alec continued, ignoring James, "Is gorgeous."

"Ah." Suddenly, Alec's enthusiasm was beginning to make sense. "If he's your type, that means he has to be young, dark-haired, pretty and utterly disinterested."

"I like a challenge."

"If you can't recognise the sheer inadvisability of sleeping with the Quartermaster on your own, then I'm not going to bother trying to point it out to you." Staying on the old Q's good side had always been good for survival. At best, it determined which 00 was assigned the latest, gorgeous outfitted sports cars; at worst, it ensured that field equipment always worked as it was meant to, without any 'hilarious' side effects. The old Q had a dark sense of humour sometimes.

"You're a pessimist. It'll age you before your time," Alec retorted, rising up from his chair. "I'm going to ask him out for dinner."

"Good luck."

"Oh," Alec added, as an afterthought from the doorway, "M wanted to speak to you."

Bastard. "And you tell me this _now_?"

James was sweating a little by the time he came to a stop outside M's office, and Moneypenny arched an eyebrow at him over at her desk. "You're late."

"006," James stated, by way of explanation, and Moneypenny's lips curled briefly as she turned to her laptop. 

"Go in. M's waiting."

The new M wasn't quite what James was expecting. He'd seen the circulated photograph in the official notice, certainly, but the composed portrait hadn't managed to convey anything about M at all - not the catlike poise, the calculating eyes, the smile like the edge of a knife, sleek and handsome like a panther, waiting for a chance to strike. The new M, James recalled, as M waved him to a seat, was the first 00 to have ever survived to the mandatory retirement age; he supposed that the new rank had probably been inevitable. 

"Ah, 007." M settled into his chair with the same, neat elegant poise.

"M."

"I have missed London," M noted, with an ironic glance towards the window; gray clouds and a chill fog blanketed the view, in London's traditional autumn smock.

"Hong Kong must have agreed with you."

"Ten years is enough to stay in one place at any one time, even if it is Hong Kong," M lifted a shoulder into a shrug. "But it is an interesting place. More exciting. You've been there, I think."

"Only on business."

"Ah, yes," M noted, with the studied neutrality of someone who had most certainly read all the 00s' personnel files. "Scotch?"

"No, thank you." James had never particularly enjoyed small talk, especially during downtime, and the previous M had been all business.

"Pity. I have a good Macallan." M pulled out a bottle and a glass from the cabinet behind him, pouring himself a generous shot. "A good year. 1979. I heard it was one of your favourites."

"Not while I'm working."

"You don't mix business with pleasure?" M's lazy smirk was a little unsettling, and James frowned slightly. 

"Not unless it creates an opportunity."

"Always focused on the mission, I see. That's good." M tipped back a sip, a pink tongue curling lightly over the rim of the glass. "But it's a cold way to live."

"It's the only way to live," James corrected, a little confused now, "You used to be a 00 yourself. Sir."

M's laugh was startling, a rich bark that never reached his eyes; half feigned, James thought, half played. He felt like he was being circled by a predator, assessed, and he wasn't sure whether he liked it. The previous M had been an accountant, treating the 00s as the dangerous assets that they were to MI6; this one, though- 

"I never lived that way. Too... _boring_. Life is short. It is meant to be enjoyed."

"I'll bear that in mind, sir," James noted politely, wondering how to extract himself from the conversation. "Did you have a mission for me?"

"Oh, no, I just wanted to see how the 00 division was going," M drawled. "And until you, I was disappointed."

"The rest have their strengths," James said defensively. "002 is a crack shot with any rifle and-"

"Yes, yes, I know all that," M interrupted, with a dismissive wave of the hand holding the glass of scotch. "It is not anyone's fault. The 00 division is a little... anachronistic, I think. Much of the Great Game is played online now, with numbers. Destabilize a regime? _Pouf_ , it can be done. Shore up a local economy? Even easier. Almost anything can be done with a computer."

"So why keep us around, sir?" James asked bluntly, narrowing his eyes, getting up when M did so, instinctively keeping his feet flat on the ground as the predator part of his hindbrain sensed its own dangerous kindred, even as M rounded the desk towards him.

"Ah, I'm sure that you still have your uses." James stiffened as M patted his shoulder lightly. "It was certainly good to meet you, James." 

"Thank you, sir." James said warily, now that he was close enough to recognise the smoky gleam in M's eyes for what it was - avarice - and as much as his own curiosity stirred, logic kept his hands firmly to his sides. "Will that be all?"

"For now," M grinned lazily at him as he tipped back the glass, leaning against the desk. "Call in 008 for me, please."

1.0.

Tiago groaned as Q let himself into the room dressed in a new and startlingly offensive mustard-brown cardigan. "You are hurting my eyes."

"I know," Q said calmly, "Consider it self-defence." 

"When have I ever been a threat to you?"

"When you're bored, you'll fuck anything that's remotely fashionable, regardless of whether it moves," Q retorted, unimpressed, "Did you want my report, or did you call me in here to waste my time?"

"I could send you back to Hong Kong."

"Oh _yes_ , please send me back to Hong Kong, where the average tech level is higher, the weather's better and so's the food. See if I care." 

"London's not so bad," Tiago temporised, all too aware that he was starting to sound plaintive, and Q sniffed.

"Name one way in which it's better than where we used to be."

"The pay?"

"Oh _yes_ , the pay," Q drawled, with the deeply unimpressed tone of someone who could hack into any bank account he wanted in the world before finishing his first morning cup of tea. 

"The company?"

"What?"

Tiago grinned. He had, in fact, been regretting his impulsive decision to uproot himself and his team from Hong Kong to accept the M posting in MI6, up until he met the existing 00 division. Sometimes it was nice to be circling around other predators for a while, exhilarating - he'd forgotten how that had felt in his long posting in Hong Kong as the only 00 assigned to the region. 

And as for the most dangerous hound that worked for Her Majesty, the handsome Commander James Bond... _bello_.

Q was studying him closely, and then his face screwed up a little as he likely deduced what was on Tiago's mind, clever boy. "You mean that you like the local attack dogs? And here I was thinking that you'd possibly evolved beyond that stage."

"I like one of them."

"Which?"

"Guess."

Q's expression went distant for a moment, as his considerable brain calculated possibilities, and while Tiago waited, he poured himself a little more scotch, if just to avoid having to look at Q's awful sweater. After a while, Q said, mildly, "007 has simian features."

Tiago choked on the scotch. "He's not so bad."

"You have no taste whatsoever. Do you want to hear my report, or should I just email it to you?"

"006 has taken a shine to you."

"Oh, you mean the other blonde monkey," Q noted, unimpressed, and Tiago was briefly moved to feel a touch of sympathy for Alec Trevelyan, "Quite."

"Give me the report," Tiago conceded, amused. By all reports, as far as Tiago knew, if something wasn't electronic and/or made out of code, then Q wasn't interested in it, and 006's doomed pursuit might prove to be entertaining, if nothing else.

"The existing security system is horrific. We'll have to replace everything. The equipment, as well. Outfit the entire building, if possible. The previous Q-branch seemed far more interested in ridiculous gadgets like exploding pens and humorously trapped phone booths than anything remotely resembling useful modern technology. My team is doing a full inventory, but I suspect that we won't be keeping anything."

"You're going to use what you can get," Tiago disagreed. "Budgetary restraints."

Q stared at Tiago, wide-eyed and aggrieved, "We never had those in Hong Kong."

"Yes, well," Tiago pointed out mildly, "I only had to answer to M when we were there, and we were a long way off from any routine inspections. Arrangements could be made. Also, tech is cheap in Hong Kong. A little went a long way. Now I answer to the Minister, and Parliament, and they're rather less understanding."

"Let's go home," Q suggested, with just a hint of begging in his tone, "You can't expect me to run anything remotely useful from the wreck on that floor."

"We _are_ home," Tiago noted dryly, "And you're going to have to make do, hm?"

" I can resign if I want to," Q growled. "Fire some of the 00s and shunt their considerable salaries into Q-branch. We'll be far more useful than they'll ever be, with a proper set up."

"Don't tempt me." Tiago relented a little. "I'll see what I can do. Get our rig flown over from Hong Kong, maybe." 

"I suppose that would be acceptable," Q decided, after a moment's thought. "There were some luxury cars in the lab. We could sell those. Our old fit out is better than what we have here, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. It could do with some upgrades."

"They're usually for the 00s." Gorgeous, deadly cars had been one of the highlights of his 00 career. 

Q eyed him flatly, "Yes, well, they'll only be getting _practical_ equipment from now onwards. If you still refuse to come to your senses and take us home, I suppose I'll have to have a requisition list emailed to you by the evening." 

"Get used to London, Benjamin."

"I'm beginning to think that the sole purpose of your existence is to ruin my life," Q said loftily, never above a touch of melodrama when surrounded by tech that wasn't cutting edge, and let himself out. 

Tiago sighed, pouring himself more scotch. Maybe he should have gone rogue after all. Life would have been easier.

II.

Alec could be unbearably pathetic when things didn't go his way, which was why James found himself padding gingerly through the gutted Q-branch floor of the MI6 building, looking for its new master through the frantic reconstruction.

Q wasn't difficult to find - he was in what looked like a nest of computer monitors, towers and wiring, set up on a haphazard and temporary set of benches within a new cylindrical glass room, surrounded by other Q-branch employees who looked just as young or younger than he was. James shot the scrolling code on the screens a brief glance, then rapped his knuckles on the glass.

Q glanced up sharply, frowned, then reluctantly extricated himself from his seat, picking his way carefully out of the room, the door letting out a hiss when opened and shut. Pressure sealed, then. 

"Sterile room," Q confirmed, when he padded up next to James. "What do you want, 007? You're not scheduled to pick up any equipment."

"Nice set up."

"It's clearly temporary," Q said, sounding annoyed at the observation, "My predecessor had a primitive idea of practical technology. We're still settling in." 

"His equipment saved my life a few times."

Q sniffed, unimpressed. "With any luck, the incidence of unnecessarily desperate situations will be reduced. Possibly without having to send out a 00 in the first place." 

James smiled, amused at Q's acerbic self-confidence. "I'll drink to that." 

"I don't drink. Terrible habit. Impairs cognitive function." Q adjusted his glasses and stared at him, oddly distant for a moment, then he added, "Let's do a trade. I'll do what you want and go out for dinner with 006. In return, I want you to promise not to sleep with M."

Startled, James swallowed what he was about to say next and started coughing awkwardly. "I beg your pardon?"

"He was starting to regret his ill-thought decision to uproot us all to come here until he met you. Eventually, however, once he realizes that he can't have you, he'll grow bored and take us home to Hong Kong. _Ergo_ , a trade."

"I wasn't going to sleep with him," James growled, with a quick glance around them to see if any of the workers had overheard.

"Of course you weren't," Q didn't seem particularly convinced. "I'll give you a hint. Each time you're summoned to his office or have to meet him, wear something awful. In fact, to be safe, just wear something awful all the time at work, just in case you run into him somewhere. It doesn't have to be overt. A tartan handkerchief, perhaps. Or a pink polka dot tie. Something. Paisley. Tie dye. Argyle. Plaid." 

"I... what?" The conversation was becoming increasingly surreal, as far as James was concerned.

"You'll see. Try it. I think you'll even find his reaction amusing. I do."

"If all of you dislike London so much, why did he even agree to take up the posting?"

"Boredom?" Q lifted a shoulder. "He makes bad decisions when he's bored. I'm not sure. Either way, we don't want to be here."

"Then go," James pointed out dryly. "No one's stopping you. Let M stay here if he wants. You're a hacker, aren't you? Location can't be important for you as long as you have an internet connection and a good computer. Why do you need him?"

"You mean, you haven't noticed?" 

James frowned at Q, then glanced belatedly back at Q's computer. Across the scrolling text, additional lines were still being fed in along with the other prompts, even though Q wasn't at his... "That's M's work?"

"He's better than all of us combined, I think, or close." Q said, clipped and matter-of-fact. "Do you think that we work for him because of the salary, when any of us could be millionaires with a few unnoticeable tweaks to the Swiss banking systems?"

"Well-"

"Stealing money from banks, that's child's play to M," Q continued, ignoring the interruption. "What we look to learn from him is how to use code to shake governments. Manipulate entire economies. Move the world itself. That's far more interesting than adding a few more zeroes to our bank accounts." 

"That's..." James trailed off, grudgingly impressed, despite himself. He'd just thought that M was yet another retired field agent, seeking to carve out a niche at the top for himself until he grew too old to let himself into the MI6 offices.

"Quite." Q patted him absently on the arm. "You can tell 006 that I'll find him in his office after work hours, and I expect to be taken somewhere civilised, preferably Japanese. In the meantime, I hope that you'll uphold your end of the bargain."

"Plaid, did you say?" Alec was going to owe James a very _big_ favour for this.

2.0.

"Did you say something to James?" Tiago demanded, when Q was showing him the new fitout to the armoury. The rest of Q-branch's floor was nearly complete, and the sterile room was no longer a tiny cylinder but a stretch across half the floor space, with a platform near a main console screen for Q. MANDALA winked at Tiago from across the floor, a whirling visual representation of code, already synched into the MI6 mainframe.

"Would I do that?" 

"I think that you would." Tiago rubbed at his eyes. "Do you know what he was wearing today? An orange and blue speckled plaid tie!"

"Isn't orange in fashion now?" Q, Tiago noted, depressed, was wearing red striped Converse sneakers. _Striped_. "I'm reworking the security camera locations-"

"We're not leaving London, Benjamin."

"Yes, you've made that quite clear to me, Mister Rodriguez." Q picked up a sleek Walther PPK from the wall. "Here's our first prototype. Palm print sensor. Keyed to the user." 

"It is hardly innovative, hm?" 

Q glowered at him. "I don't have a budget to be innovative _with_."

"How was your date with 006?" Tiago asked snidely, by way of response, and had the pleasure of watching Q grimace, though he ignored him, turning instead to pick up something else in a box on the shelf.

"Distress signal. Wide frequency radio." Q held out a tiny silver chip.

Tiago rolled his eyes. "Oh, a _radio_. What a brilliant and _modern_ idea."

"If I force it down your throat I think it would still kill you," Q mused out aloud, and out of habit, Tiago leered. 

"There are better things to... a plastic _watch_? Did you have to?"

Q slid his cuff back over the pink monstrosity on his wrist as Tiago groaned, feeling a headache starting to creep back in. "Honestly, I'm surprised that none of the dictators you ever faced managed to blindside you with a slip of paisley."

"You're the only one who relentlessly takes advantage of my weaknesses." Tiago scowled, then amended, "Or, you used to be."

"Quite." Q even smirked a little, this time, _hijo de puta_. "How long can you hold out, _M_? Jumping hoops for all those ministers and bureaucrats? Working on other peoples' deadlines?"

"Get back to your workstation," Tiago growled, "We still have a situation in Gaza to defuse."

"Yes, sir," Q said mockingly, and Tiago glowered as Q sauntered back to his platform. He was going to revenge himself on the boy somehow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which computer gaming turns out to be good prep for a career in espionage.

III.

The old M looked absolutely unsurprised when she straightened up from her azaleas to see James sauntering up the pebbled road to her Sussex house, and she turned back to her flowers, tipping them more water. "You shouldn't be aware of this address, 007."

"Nice to see that you're settling in well, ma'am." 

"I would report you, save that I think that Tiago would only find it amusing." M said dryly, "How is he, by the way?"

"He's..." James hesitated for a moment, searching for the right word. 'Fine' would be a lie, and he had never been very good at lying to M - she had a sense for it like a hawk, and was always brutal in her retorts. 'Bored' would be too close to the truth, and technically, James _was_ meant to show some loyalty to the new M, however strange he might be.

"It's good to see that you still have your instincts." M stated, then she sighed and carefully put down her watering can. "Since you came all the way out here to talk to me, come in for a cup of tea."

"Yes, ma'am." 

The house was small - cozy and warm, nothing like the stately elegance of Eaton Square - it looked lived in, perhaps too perfectly so, every detail carefully set in place, as though M had been living here for decades. Nothing like the fortress that her previous lodgings had been. M had warranted a security detail for the rest of her life, James recalled, but she had turned it down. That had surprised no one, either - it seemed that M was choosing to take security in obscurity.

"Sit." M waved him to a chair at the kitchen bench, and put on the kettle. "Did he bring the boys with him?"

"He set up a group of them as the new Q-branch."

"So he would." M leaned back against the cabinets, folding her arms over her frock. "Tiago's a brilliant agent, 007. He'll make an equally brilliant M, assuming that he doesn't get bored."

"Q mentioned that Tiago makes 'bad decisions' when he's bored?"

"So he does." M glanced over at the kettle, as though trying to come to a decision, then she straightened her shoulders. "He used to be the 00 assigned to my division, when I was head of Hong Kong's MI6 branch. He had a near perfect mission completion record, but he never handled downtime very well. We had always suspected him of... misusing his talent for technology. And then we found out that he'd been hacking the Chinese government, just to entertain himself. Nothing that could be traced to MI6, of course, but the Chinese were suspicious, and the Hong Kong handover was approaching."

"So I was faced with a decision. Make a deal with my Chinese counterpart, to trade Tiago in for peace and a few of our field agents that they had caught over the years, or warn him off and do nothing else, possibly risking years of diplomatic work in the region while doing so."

"And you chose the latter? Surprising." The old M had always struck James as an accountant, preferring to weigh risks rather than trust sentiment. Sometimes he'd wondered if it had been because she was the first woman to head MI6; that she'd had to be harder than everyone else to do so. 

"Whether to trade in the most brilliant agent I had ever met for six agents whose cover had been long blown and were likely next to dead from Chinese 'hospitality', and an uncertain promise of peace? Of course not. Instead, I gave Tiago a warning and worked my arse off for the next few months. We got our handover, and I decided to change Tiago's scope of work. I needed to give him something that was more challenging. So I set him against his own kind."

"His own kind?"

"Other hackers. Equally brilliant, usually young boys from around the globe, who had only contempt for authority and social restrictions. They were the new danger that I saw. A faceless enemy, a threat to national security and economic institutions purely because they could be."

"Q and the others," James noted, blinking.

"Most of the boys he met could be warned off... or turned aside, one way or the other. But your new Q and his friends called themselves OUTIS, the most brilliant of a bad bunch, and they had, at that time, a dangerous hobby - hacking into government intelligence databases, just to see if they could, stealing codes, diplomatic cables, anything they could find that they thought was amusing. And instead of hiding from Tiago's campaign against their kind, they decided to fight back. Ultimately an ill-thought decision - Tiago was far more cunning than they were - and eventually, he managed to round them all up. I told him to shoot them. He refused." 

"He did?" 

"I was as surprised as you are now. Tiago had never disobeyed direct orders. I threatened disciplinary action. A burn notice, even. He dared me to do it. We argued, and eventually, he got me to give him discretion. As it turned out," M padded over to the kettle as it started to whistle, "Tiago was clever again, after all. He walked into the holding room as the arch enemy of those boys. When he left it, he was their hero."

"They're very loyal to him." James had managed that impression, at the least, for all the open squabbling between the new Q and M.

"He's also made them far more dangerous than they used to be. Milk?"

"No thank you, ma'am." James watched as M poured them both a cup, stirring a touch of sugar into hers. "You left Hong Kong to him."

"I did. I felt that handling the region - and his new and often rebellious protégés - would be enough to occupy him. Besides, I had always intended to recommend him for the position of M when I retired, and it would have been good for his resume." 

James arched an eyebrow. "That part surprises me. By your own words, he's dangerous when he's bored."

"Tiago is always dangerous," M corrected. "That's the nature of you 00s. But it's true that Tiago has far more resources at his fingertips with which to wreak havoc if he wants to. I simply sought to channel it for our purposes."

"He's also in a far better position now to make the world burn, if he wants it to."

"So he is." M took a sip of her tea, "And that's exactly why I recommended him for M. He may be at the commanding seat in MI6 now, but that also puts him within sighting range. If he turns, you're now in a good _position_ to put him down. Keep it that way."

James smiled thinly, even as he raised his cup. "I wasn't aware that you still had the authority to give me orders, ma'am."

"It wasn't an order." M eyed him coolly. "It was a statement of necessity. Watch him closely."

3.0.

The opportunity to observe 007 at work came in fairly quickly. Nothing particularly exciting, admittedly, in Tiago's opinion, just the theft of some top-secret satellite blueprints, but the satellite feeds that Q had commandeered were fairly clear, and watching 007 leave a trail of havoc through Belgrade in a motorcycle chase was rather exhilarating. Not to mention that James did look simply divine in a navy Tom Ford suit-

"Sir," Q muttered, from beside him on the platform, as he coordinated satellite feeds and manipulated traffic, "May I note that should your lust become any more palpable, it's quite likely that you'll short-circuit MANDALA."

"The mark's taking a right," Tiago ignored the snide remark. "Q, stop the Savska tram in the intersection."

"John, write me the code. Alex, bring up the matrix." Q shot the satellite feed behind him a quick glance, then turned back to the command prompts on his screen, "On your mark, M."

"Now." On the satellite feed, the red tram came to an abrupt halt, snarling up traffic. "007, your target's about to take a left turn. We've blocked the main street."

"I see him." 007's voice fed in through the intercom, flat and composed. 

"We're going to cut him off. Hn. Gas explosion? No, we might destroy the plans. Overload the local electricity grid?"

"Doable, but same problem." Q piped in.

"He's... hm he's going to pass a construction site. Check if any of those excavators have ESD."

"Two."

"Override those. Give manual control to Karl and Sam. Block off that street."

Q typed furiously, frowning for a moment, then laughs and whoops from the Farm indicated that Q had succeeded. "Done. Linking onboard camera. Have fun, guys." 

On the satellite feed, two backhoe-loaders extricated themselves from the construction site, ambling ponderously into traffic among the shouts and confusion of their operators. Startled, the mark tried to swerve, but collided with the back of a hastily braking car instead, smashing into the back window. 

"Good work, boys. Cede control of the matrices, wipe the prints," Tiago relaxed. "Retrieve the plans and get to evac, 007."

"Immediately, sir." Was that a touch of wariness in 007's voice? Still, James came to a stop, scrambled off his bike, and efficiently rifled through the still-twitching body, retrieving the USB before getting back onto his bike and melting into traffic. 

Q reached over and switched off outgoing feed on the intercom. "That could have been done with any field agent."

"There could have been complications. Besides, the clearance level of the mission warranted a 00."

"Attack dogs will bite anyone," Q noted idly, as the Farm glanced between them, "Especially an unfamiliar master."

"They also need to be walked now and then, or they'll chew the furniture," Tiago retorted, though he smirked lazily when Q rolled his eyes. 

He'd rather missed this sort of work, he had to admit. Hong Kong had been fairly quiet of late, by way of field work that couldn't be fully handled by Q and his team - after all, technically, MI6 hadn't been meant to have any sort of operational arm there after the transition, and they'd mostly simply been tasked with keeping an eye on the region and assisting any field agents who might pass through on business.

Unofficially, of course, they had become MI6's defence - and offence - against the rising anonymous gangs of hackers, which Tiago had to admit had been a rather brilliant tactical move by the previous M. It had certainly been more intellectually stimulating than burrowing into dictatorships, where the enemy was known and, as it were, often in plain sight, and surrounded by things that could be remotely detonated with some ingenuity.

Still, as much as Tiago would never want to return to full field work, he supposed that this sort of top down coordination had its merits. Even the usually cynical-beyond-their-years Farm seemed enthused by their first real effort at coordinating a top-level mission, and Q was trying and failing at scowling. 

"You enjoyed that," Tiago pointed out smugly anyway.

"I think I've derived more excitement from playing Grand Theft Auto," Q retorted, though he didn't meet Tiago's eyes, MANDALA switching to its usual whirl of flickering code as he typed.

"Normal field work might not need this sort of involvement," Tiago ignored Q, "But I suppose perhaps with a larger team we could revolutionalize how the 00s are handled. Make it more efficient, at the least." 

"Where there's existing infrastructure and satellite coverage that we could override."

"Ah," Tiago lifted a shoulder, "For the rest of the world, they'll have your distressingly uninspired gadgets to rely on, I suppose." 

Q glowered at Tiago briefly before turning back to his laptop. "What did you expect me to make with the budget, M? A slinky powered nerf gun that shoots polonium projectiles? _Oh_ , except that we _can't_ afford polonium anyway. We might have to make do with BB shot."

"It's not so bad," Tiago said dryly, though he held up his palms. "Practical and subtle is good." 

Q stared at him for a moment, as though trying to decide whether Tiago was mocking him, then he sighed. "For our next... _trick_ ," he noted, with a touch of acid, "I was going to take apart some iPhones and iPad Minis. I think we could modify those for field work. No ridiculous grappling hooks or inbuilt lasers, before you ask."

"Lasers are always useful," Tiago said innocently.

"Why don't you go and preen before the Minister?" Q scowled. "Ask her for money, while you're at it."

"Don't get fixated." Tiago reached over to pat Q's arm, only to hesitate and wince as Q idly turned up a cuff, then smirked when Tiago winced and froze. A paisley flower lining pattern? _Really_?

Someday, when Tiago had more free time, he resolved to personally assassinate Paul Smith.

IV.

The flight back had been uneventful, but James was still exhausted by the time he made it back to MI6, padding into Q-branch's floor, the USB in his pocket. He hesitated when he noticed that Q seemed to be busy - the large screen was being occupied by another satellite feed, and Q had a pair of headphones on, cycling between glancing at the screen or typing on his laptop.

Another 00, then. James took a step back, not about to interrupt, especially when he took a closer look at the screen and recognised Alec, sidling through an alley in what seemed to be Istanbul. One of Q-Branch's other operatives peered at him, blinked belatedly, then typed out a message, and Q's chin jerked up as he turned around, motioning for James to come closer. 

When James got into range, Q pulled the headphones off his head and pushed them into his arms. "Give me the USB." As James handed it over, Q growled, "I'll go and talk to M. You can handle 006 and his juvenile attempts at irrelevant conversation. Help him navigate his way to the target mark on the map. See it? Good. Bye."

James looked to the Farm a little desperately for help, only to find himself pointedly ignored as Q stalked off, and he sighed as he put the headphones on.

"So," Alec drawled, clearly unaware of the switch, "I was thinking, when I come home, we could-"

"Yes?" James asked dryly.

There was a pause, then Alec sighed. "Fuck off, James."

"I've been volunteered. Take a left, then a right after about fifty metres."

"I know where I'm going," Alec muttered petulantly, "I lived here once for a month, remember? Where's Q?"

"Gone to talk to M. Sorry to disappoint."

Alec exhaled. "Well then, go with him. I don't need your help." 

"What's the mission?"

"Following up some sort of rumour," Alec said evasively, "I'm not exactly in a secure location."

"Understood." James nodded, then added, helpfully, "You're about to walk straight into a bike."

"I could see that. You're demotivating me just by talking. Is Q back yet?"

"No."

"Right." On the screen, Alec padded over to an unattended motorcycle and got on, starting it up even as its owner squawked and waved his hands in frantic horror. "Let's just get this over with, then."

"I rather thought that you were wasting time. You were always creative."

"Fuck you, James." Alec sped into traffic, navigating cars and trucks expertly as he drew down the main roads, angling towards the target building, the satellite feed zooming out at a touch from someone at the Farm to follow him. "How was your trip?"

"Eventful." James had felt a little less unsettled about the whole business by the time he landed in Heathrow, but then again, 00s had to be adaptable. If that was the future of espionage, James knew that he was just going to have to get used to it.

"I heard. Moneypenny told me about it." Alec sounded a touch sympathetic. "Brave new world, eh?"

"Brave new world," James echoed, feeling his age again, watching Alec swerve neatly between a pair of dusty cars. "You're not going to make the traffic lights at this speed."

" _Please_ shut up."

Q returned by the time Alec reached the building, looking irritable when he realized that James was bickering with Alec as Alec circled the locked down compound, looking for a way in. "Oh, for God's sake." He pressed the intercom, then turned to his laptop. "006, there's a service entrance a minute behind you. I'm going to open it."

"You're back!" Alec perked up audibly. "I love you. Have I told you that I love you?"

"Keep the radio chatter professional, 006. 007, M's about to head out to Downing Street. He wants a debrief when he gets back."

"Thank you, Q," James nodded, as the service door opened on the zoomed in satellite feed, and Alec slipped in. Q frowned, adjusting his glasses, and the view switched to an overhead, infrared map. 

"I'm disabling the security cameras. There's a patrol approaching your location in five minutes. Four people. I suggest that you head up the corridor and take the first left. There should be a maintenance stairwell."

 _Brave new world_ , James thought, as he watched Alec move into position.

4.0.

007 looked delightfully rumpled and tired when he let himself into Tiago's office - the agent had obviously waited around MI6 instead of going home to rest. "M."

"Good work, 007." Tiago walked past 007 to his desk, to drop Downing Street's folder on it. 007 was going to have to rest - 002 could probably handle a search and extract. 

"I hardly had to do anything," 007 said evenly, though when Tiago glanced up at him, James' eyes were clear and neutral. 

"I think that you understate your contribution." 

"A normal field agent could have flushed the quarry."

"I needed to see what you were capable of."

"With all due respect," James said, with the same neutral tone, "You can see what I'm capable of from reading my file, sir."

"Think of it as an experiment," Tiago lifted a shoulder into a shrug. "Q and his team have never directed a field operation like this before, only relatively minor matters. Why not use an operative who could be counted on to complete the mission by himself if it turned out that they were not ready, hm?"

Flattery worked, even on an old agent with an evidently bruised pride: James relaxed almost imperceptibly. "They're more than ready. They're a force to be reckoned with."

"I'll relay your opinion to them. They'll be quite pleased." Tiago leaned against his desk, folding his arms. "With training, I think that the Farm should be able to handle that sort of top-down coordination individually. That would be useful in certain circumstances, don't you think?"

007 shrugged. "Probably."

"I won't be getting rid of the 00 division," Tiago kept his voice soothing, as he surreptitiously looked James over, thinking. 007's guard was probably down, and he didn't look like he was wearing any... surprises. Tempting. So tempting. "Rest assured."

"I didn't think that you would be." The wariness returned to James' eyes when Tiago stepped closer, though. "Will that be all? I've already handed Moneypenny my written report."

"Efficient. That's good," Tiago allowed himself a sly smile when James didn't try to back off. He could see the predator in James, coiled and waiting, watching him with open curiosity, and ah, with an opportunity like this, why not have a taste? Tiago had never been very good at denying himself anything. "You were very impressive."

"Hardly," James disagreed, though he sucked in a soft breath when Tiago reached for him, curling a palm up over his cheek-

Tiago let out a yelp as the sprinkler directly above them abruptly switched itself on, and James jerked back with a curse, his hand going automatically for the pistol in his suit before he hesitated and remembered himself, edging back as the spray switched itself off just as quickly.

"Sorry, M. Routine testing," Q drawled over the overhead speakers, just as James seemed to take it as his cue to flee the premises. 

" _Benjamin_!"


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If something is 'hipster', in James' opinion, it's only to be treated with suspicion.

V.

Q glowered at James the moment he sat down at the table in the small cafe. "You're late."

"This place was hard to find." The cafe was filled with the young and casually fashionable, haphazardly decorated with flowers in mismatching enamel or steel tins, long uneven benches pushed up against in rows against graying stone tables, the menu chalked up on chalkboard paint on stripped back brick and plaster walls, industrial chic. James felt distinctly out of place in his suit, even as he ordered a long black from a smiling, freckled waitress who was probably half his age. 

"I installed GPS into your new phone," Q narrowed his eyes. "Please tell me that you know how to use it."

"I do," James noted firmly, though he'd never used GPS in London before; the city was old territory to him, or so he'd always thought, a gray and dreary place of comfort that he left to defend and returned to lick his wounds in; he'd never thought of using maps to define her. "Why did you want me to come here?" 

Q had ignored James for a couple of days while James had taken his usual stipend of recreational leave, just to avoid MI6 and clear his head to think, and then he had received a text this morning with an address and a time. 

"This is one of the few public spots in London where you can't get satnav coverage. Some sort of confluence of construction and bad reception," Q lifted a shoulder. "Can't be too careful with _him_."

"Yes," James cleared his throat, "About that-"

"I suppose it was only to be expected," Q interrupted, though he did shoot James a brief look of disdain that James was fairly sure that he didn't deserve, even with the lapse of self-control that he'd had in M's office, "He does have a sort of... lizard allure that seems to be irresistible to _some_ people." 

"You haven't slept with him before," James concluded blandly, just so that he could have the pleasure of watching Q's normally blank composure crumple briefly in irritated disgust. Personally, he _was_ a little embarrassed that he'd given in so easily, but God, it had felt inevitable, caught in Tiago's air of electric confidence, his lazy charm, his answering predator's smile-

"God, no. I'd have moved to a different planet to get away from him if he'd ever been anything more than remotely interested in me. Use the defence I taught you. This shouldn't be difficult." 

James smiled as neutrally as he could. "I've heard that he's very dangerous when he's bored. Isn't that right, 'Nobody'?" 

Q arched an eyebrow at him even as their coffee arrived - a cappuccino for Q, and James' long black - and he waited for the waitress to walk away before adding, coolly, "And I'm supposed to be impressed that you've dug that up about me? Have you even read Homer's Odyssey?"

"Eton was rather thorough." James admitted, although literature was thankfully mostly a distant memory. "You and your friends tried to taunt Polyphemus and got caught instead." 

"Your point being?"

"You know firsthand the damage he can do when he's bored. Suppose I have reason to be concerned about your plan to bore him into changing his mind about London."

Q stared at him thoughtfully, tilting his head, then he curled his long, pale fingers against his cup. "Ah. You've been talking to that bitch."

"Careful," James noted dryly, though he smiled faintly.

"I'll say what I like. She tried to have us all killed." Q scowled. "With about the same sentiment as she would have disposed of a coffee cup. Did you even know how old we were then?"

"Old enough to know better about what you were doing for fun."

"Maybe." Q conceded, though he looked unimpressed. "If you've been talking to her, and she's mentioned... then why did she... _ah_." Q _was_ a brilliant boy. "She's told you to watch us. She still doesn't trust us, does she? What are you going to do, _James_? Spank us if we're _bad_? You have no idea how easily we could destroy you if we wanted to, and we wouldn't even need _him_ to get involved."

"Careful," James repeated, and he smiled again. "Old dog. Old gun. Can't jam that with a satellite."

Q narrowed his eyes warily, though James had to give the boy points for obstinate courage - he didn't even blink, or look afraid in the least. "Why are you telling me this? If you were meant to babysit us, it would have been better for you to keep mum and wait for him to trip up."

"You sound like you don't care if he burns the world down."

"Should I?" Q took a sip of his coffee. 

"Maybe common humanity should feature into that consideration somewhere."

"My dear James," Q noted dryly, "If he had listened to his 'common humanity' and that old woman you hold in such high regard, my friends and I would have been dead a long time ago. With that in _context_ , perhaps you can see why I don't care what he does to the world. If he wants to burn it all down, we'll pass him the matches if he asks us to."

"You're not making a good case for yourselves." If it ever came to the point where James had to take Tiago out, he supposed regretfully that Q and the rest of the new Q-branch would also have to go - probably at the same time. Good to know.

"I don't see why I should be making a case for myself before the obsolete." 

"You've also said that he can't see us here."

"We're in public," Q pointed out, "And besides, Alec's just outside. He might be your friend, but I think he'll try and stop you if you suddenly pull a gun on me."

"What?" James hadn't even seen Alec on his way in - though he supposed that Alec was always very good at stealth, even among the other 00s. 

"Couldn't shake him. He showed up on my app, though." Q held up his phone with a touch of professional pride, showing a pale green map with two orange markers and a blue marker - one orange marker next to the blue, clearly James, and the other just outside the outline of the building.

"You have an _app_ for that?"

"Still in alpha testing. It's a little unstable," Q pursed his lips, "Though I think that's possibly more of a fault of iOS6 than anything else. I'll have to write our own OS just to be safe, when I have the time. It tags people via their electronics' signatures. We're going to call it AEGIS."

"You do like your Greek names." 

"Quite." Q narrowed his eyes slightly at the reminder, and he straightened up in his seat. "So. An impasse?"

"Not particularly." James leaned his cheek on his palm. The coffee _was_ rather good. "You don't have to be so hostile. I think that he'll make a good M. You're certainly a very good Q."

"But that means that we'll all be staying in London," Q pointed out irritably.

"It's a nice city, on its good days."

"If that's what you've decided, then we have nothing more to talk about," Q said coldly. "Good day, James. And could you tell Alec that if he follows me home again, I'm going to wire his office with C4. My predecessor had _that_ in ample stock, at least."

"Wait," James got up from the bench, but Q had already stalked out towards the street, hailing a cab. Dropping the change from his pockets on the table, James padded out, watching people through his peripheral vision, then leaned over casually and grabbed Alec as he slipped away from where he had been leaning against the shadow of the wall, a hat shading his eyes.

"Oh, fuck off, James," Alec glowered at him.

"He's going to wire your office with plastic if you go after him," James retorted absently, still thinking Q's reaction over. He was going to have to be careful about choosing his next step-

"And?" Alec was after all, James supposed wryly, an explosives expert in his own right, and this was not exactly a threat that would faze him. Poor Q. "What were the both of you talking about, anyway? He's not your type."

James rolled his eyes. Trust Alec to take a completely incorrect view of the matter. "Could you possibly concentrate on something other than your libido for more than a minute? We might have a situation."

5.0.

"And so?" Tiago inquired, as mildly as he could, after Q had finished growling, just to watch Q redden slightly in exasperation.

"Surely you can see that our situation in London is untenable. Let's return to Hong Kong."

"It is?"

Q eyed him clinically, as though checking for signs of psychosis, and noted acerbically, "The local attack dogs are looking for a reason to go for your throat, _sir_."

"Ah, but that just makes me nostalgic," Tiago replied, folding his arms and settling deeper into his chair with a grin, "You see, there can only be nine 00s at any one point in time, and back in the day, it was rather more competitive."

Q frowned at him, obviously trying to figure out whether Tiago was joking, then he sniffed. "Do you want me to take care of it?" 

"No, no, no," Tiago decided. "Leave it." This could prove entertaining in and of itself, even if he didn't manage to get 007 into bed - but ah, maybe that was what the old M was trying for all along. Or maybe not. She was always such a cunning one. 

"Do make an effort to stop thinking with the wrong bits of your anatomy, M." Q narrowed his eyes, "And if you make a joke, or an innuendo, or any sort of sexual reference at all in your next statement, I will make it my personal mission for you to regret it within the next week."

"Such bad _manners_ , Benjamin," Tiago noted, with mock hurt, "All these... _threats_. Very bad. I'm wounded."

"We can't watch over you all the time," Q snapped, "If anything, it'll probably be a mentally scarring experience, and I don't like therapy. Psychologists are tedious people."

"Don't _worry_ ," Tiago said soothingly. "James said that he thought that I would make a good M, didn't he? Then there's nothing to be concerned about. The transition period for a new M is always a little rocky. Attack dogs don't change their master easily."

"I could see that much, seeing as he ran for Her skirts the moment he was spooked." Q's shoulders slumped a little. "So I can't dissuade you from trying to kill yourself? If they take you out, they'll get rid of the rest of us too, by the way. I could tell, from the way he was looking at me, like he was measuring me up for a coffin."

"Benjamin," Tiago moderated his tone, now that he'd been sufficiently amused by it all and he could tell that Q was genuinely worried for all of them, "Remember what I told all of you before? When I asked all of you to trust me?"

There was a reluctant sigh, then, "You said... you said that you'll make sure that we'll never have any reason to fear the world again."

"And have I ever given you any reason to think otherwise, since then?"

"No. I suppose not. Though there's always a first time," Q added, if half-heartedly.

"And do you think that 007 will be able to get the better of me?" 

Q scowled as he straightened up. "I refuse to preside over some sort of testosterone-"

"Hm?"

Q exhaled. "You've seen his file. He's dangerous. Deserves his reputation."

"Ah, but that's what makes it challenging," Tiago noted, and grinned wickedly when Q rolled his eyes. "I have the measure of all the other 00s - I think they're coming over nicely. But 007 was always the old M's favourite, at least after I retired. Maybe we should focus on getting him on board, yes?"

"You just want to get into his pants," Q shot back.

"And so," Tiago pointedly ignored that, "I think I should assign you to handle 006's missions permanently."

" _What_? Why?"

"006 is obviously 007's best friend. They studied at Eton together. Joined MI6 together. They're close. Affect one and the other should eventually follow."

Q was staring at him with a hilarious expression of horrified revulsion. "You _can't_ be suggesting that-"

"No, no," Tiago said dryly, fighting down a smirk. "He's already very attached to you despite your best efforts, isn't he? There's no need to sleep with him, or whatever you think that I've just asked you to do. Just carry on with what you were doing. And try not to murder him. I saw you looking at all that C4."

"I suppose," Q muttered, after a pause, "That I could _tolerate_ his asinine advances for a while more."

"He's not so bad," Tiago ventured, if only because 006 had seemed genuinely infatuated with Q, possibly bordering on being obsessively so, and he didn't have 007's track record with loving and leaving easy women, surprisingly enough. "And he's a good operative."

Q eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then he straightened his glasses. "Do you want me to talk to the rest of the Farm?"

"No," Tiago decided, after a moment. "I don't want them to get worried. Or worse, try to act on their own initiative. Let's see how the cards lie, for now. I'm not ruling out the possibility of returning to Hong Kong outright," he added, when Q snorted, "But I won't be so easily scared off just because an old dog is barking at me."

"All right." Q looked resigned, now. "You usually know best."

"Your _graceful_ concession inspires me."

Another snort. "Don't get too confident, old man."

"I'll try my best," Tiago said archly. "Remember, business as usual, Q. No need to rock the boat unnecessarily. Tempting as it might be." 

"Fine."

"Now go back to monitoring the Gaza situation. And ask Moneypenny to call in 002 for her debrief."

VI.

James had to admit to being a little surprised that nothing overtly changed in MI6, even though Q had to have talked to M, even though M had to be wary. Or perhaps he was confident, thought that a couple of ageing spies couldn't be much of a threat. James, however, didn't think that the new M would be given to any sort of over-confidence, the way Q was. He wouldn't have survived the 00 posting into retirement, otherwise.

006 had played along, for a while, but Alec had never had a particularly good attention span outside of work or his pursuits of disinterested paramours, and eventually, he'd simply told James that he was being paranoid. 

"Even the old M?" James had shot back by way of response, and 006 had shrugged from where he had been lounging in James' office. Apparently Q had quite possibly left unpleasant surprises in 006's office again - by way of revenge against something or other about Alec taking to 'stalking' him during the weekends. No C4 so far, at least, but Q could be surprisingly and viciously inventive with just bits of wire, an orange and some soda water. 

"She was growing old. It was obvious near the end. Getting a little paranoid about the world's 'new threat'. As though a few boys with computers could do more damage than terrorist groups with nuclear capacity." 

James had personally thought that if M and Q-branch had actually _wanted_ to do the world damage, they could do far more with just their computers than terrorist groups, but he could see that Alec wasn't going to concede this point easily. "I think they're waiting to see if we'll play our hand."

"Then let them wait." Alec had smirked. "I heard that _he_ hasn't stopped chasing you around the office." 

James had grimaced. He'd kept Q's 'defence' strictly in mind, if only because M's reaction to what he perceived as 'bad' fashion was admittedly amusing, but M hadn't passed up any opportunity at all to try and catch James alone. Downtime in MI6 was turning into some sort of cat and mouse game of chicken, and James didn't like how it seemed to be entertaining Alec and Moneypenny. Bastards.

Getting out of London on a mission had been a relief, even if he was effectively playing delivery boy; with the situation in Syria as it was now, sending anything other than a 00 was possibly going to be murder. The rebel HQ in Daret Ezza was filthy, dusty and intermittently pulverized by overhead bombing, but James ignored the chatter and pointing around him as he helped volunteer technicians set up Q's toys.

"I included a few copies of a manual in various languages," Q muttered into James' earpiece, his voice crackling with static. The Syrian government's communications shutdown hadn't affected satellite navigation, but reception was apparently a little intermittent. "This shouldn't be taking so long."

"Should have packed a generator," James noted dryly.

"There's a miniature solar array, if you haven't broken it." Q sighed explosively. "This isn't my design, it's a rather last minute overhaul of military tech. With a little more time and money-"

"It's impressive," James cut in, if only because Q had been whining about the same topic for over a week now, or so James had heard from Alec, after M had blithely dropped the tech in Q's lap with an impossible refinement deadline. The UK had evidently decided to follow the USA in providing non-lethal equipment to the Syrian rebellion, if a little belatedly. 

Q grumbled under his breath, then added, "I can't see anything. If only there wasn't all that blasted bombing. This could be easier for all and sundry if you assembled it on a roof within satnav visibility."

"Yes, how inconvenient," James drawled, over the distant whine of artillery shells, as techs unfolded Q's obsessively detailed assembly chart over one of the sole surviving tables. 

"Maybe we could override the artillery and clear the air space for a while," Q muttered, oblivious to sarcasm when he was fixated, "But you'll probably have a devil of a time convincing them to head up to the roofs." There was a yawn - it was 3 a.m. on the other side of the world - and Q asked, "Are they done yet?"

"Only... about a thousand or so steps to go, Q."

"Don't exaggerate, 007, there are only fifty-four," Q retorted, stifling another yawn. "Blast. Maybe I should take a nap, and you can just give me a shout whenever you run into any problems." 

"Aren't you meant to be monitoring the vicinity for government activity, just in case?" The secondary aspect of James' mission was to destroy Q-branch's tech - if it seemed possible that it would be captured by government forces. 

"It's just bloody bombs and mortars everywhere... what do you want, Sam? I'm with 007 on... what?" The sleepy edge to Q's voice faded. "No, I'm not aware of... it's three in the fucking morning, how can there be contractors?" 

"Contractors?" James repeated, waving away questioning glances from the Syrian techs who glanced at him, confused.

"Hold on for a moment, 007." There was the sound of footsteps, as though Q was padding away from the intercom, then James heard his voice, a little further away. "That can't be right. How did they clear security? We're not scheduled to have any refurb work done today, let alone at this godforsaken hour."

"Q," James circled away from the techs, "Listen to me. Call Alec, he's the only 00 in London. He can reach MI6 within the hour. Do it _now_. Alert security, the police. _Now_. Q!"

"Shut down the lifts," Q snapped, "They're using the stairs? Pressure lock on all the doors... where's M? He hasn't gone home? _Fuck_. We put in the new security measures up there two days ago, we can lock down his floor. Yeah. Shut down his terminal, or he'll try and get out-" There was a faint rush of chatter that James couldn't make out, as he circled anxiously, then the blare of an alarm, tinny and loud in the background.

"Q?"

"007." Q's voice sounded closer now, tense. "Sorry, you're on your own in Syria for now. John, get an update on security. Sam, contact Alex and the others, maybe they can help out from home. I'll call 006... they're what? They're on this floor? Why would they come to this floor? M's on the top floor." 

"Q," James snapped, "Take your staff and go to the armoury. Lock yourselves in there. There's a blast door and there are guns, you can hold that position. Go now!" 

"Move!" James heard Q shout at his staff, then there was a quick, receding patter of steps. Quickly, he dug out his phone, dialling Alec's number from memory.

Alec picked up on the third ring, his voice rusty from sleep. "James?"

"Get to MI6, Alec. Q-branch is under attack." James glanced at the rebels watching him worriedly, and grit his teeth. "I'm coming home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who like a bit of a glossary:
> 
> Outis - 'Nobody', the name used by Odysseus against Polyphemus  
> Bit Bang - hacker terminology, see wikipedia for the details if you're really that curious


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Great Game was a blood sport even at the best of times, and James preferred to have visible parameters.

6.0.

The first realization that something was very wrong came when Tiago's computer abruptly switched itself off and wouldn't turn back on. The second hint came moments later, when the alarms started to wail, and Tiago drew his pistol instantly.

It was far too early in the morning and there was no ongoing global crisis at the moment, which meant that there was only a skeleton staff operating in MI6. Cautiously, Tiago let himself out of his office, only to find the security on his floor trying to open the fire escape door with no luck.

"Report," Tiago said brusquely, as he holstered his pistol in the concealed carry under his suit, and the officers snapped to attention. 

"We're under attack. Q has instructed us to stay on this floor and wait for the all clear."

"He has, has he?" That explained the bloody computer switching off, that damned brat. Annoyed, Tiago slipped his gun back into the holster, stalking over to Moneypenny's desk. "Contact security. We're blind here. Find out what's happening."

"We've already tried that. Security's not responding. Neither is Q."

"Keep trying. What about the police?" 

"They're on their way, sir." 

Moneypenny's computer didn't work, either, nor did any of the other terminals on the floor, and the security guards flinched when Tiago spat out a curse in Spanish. Pulling out his phone, he called Q, circling to the blast-proof shuttered windows, but unsurprisingly, Q didn't pick up. Nor did Sam and John. 

006 picked up, _thankfully_. "M. I'm on my way. James called me. He's returning from Syria." 

How did 007 know? He wasn't even in the _country_. "He called you?"

"He was on the intercom with Q when there was an attack. He believes that the intruders are targeting Q-branch." Ah yes, the Syrian peacekeeping delivery mission.

"Why would they do that?" Tiago muttered, a little confused, even as he clenched his hands. "Keep me updated. Q will have locked down the lifts. Use the stairs." Setting his phone to speaker, he placed it on Moneypenny's desk, then beckoned at one of the guards. "You. Give me your phone." When it was handed over, Tiago called Moneypenny. "Eve. Q-Branch is under attack. Wake all available field agents. Check on the members of Q-branch who are not currently at MI6, and move them to the emergency lockdown." 

"Understood." Moneypenny said, instantly businesslike. "Where are you, sir?"

"Q locked me on the top floor," Tiago growled. "I can't access the internal override. He's also locked all the computers." That bloody _brat_. 

"006 is in London."

"He's on his way. Update me when the others are secure." 

"Understood, sir." 

Tiago paced, tense and quietly furious, until 006 finally, after what felt like an _eternity_ , said, clipped, "I'm heading up through the service entry. Security is dead. Silencer shots, clean kills, professional. I can hear sirens."

"Was the door forced?"

"No."

 _Inside job_ , Tiago thought, or maybe a very successful hack - no, he would have liked to think that MANDALA was better than that. Someone on the inside, then, who had known that there would be a skeleton crew in MI6 today, that Tiago had been working late for the last few days, along with a small selection of Q-branch. Someone with access to at least the lower tier doors.

But why go to so much trouble to extract Q from MI6? It would have been easier to catch up with Q when he was on the way home, buried in the masses of humanity... and _why_ Q and the others? 

"I'm on my way up," 006 said then, with a 00's neutral tone, waiting for further orders.

"Check Q-branch's floor. Priority on extraction."

"Understood, sir." There was another long, interminable period where the only sound was the faintest scuffle of 006's shoes on concrete, then, "They melted the pressure lock." 

That sounded like a highly funded - and planned - sting operation. Tiago absently cycled possibilities in his mind even as he clenched his hands over the edge of Moneypenny's desk, waiting for 006 to sweep the area.

Finally, and awfully, there was a neutral, "Area clear."

"What?" Tiago's stomach dropped, then he forced himself to keep calm. "Report."

"They've destroyed the computer room. Localised explosives." Alec was walking faster, now, not bothering with stealth, his heels tapping over concrete and metal.

"Check the armoury." That was the logical place for Q and the others to hole up. 

Footsteps, then the patter of shoes on the steel stairwell, then, "Another melted lock. I'm through. Area clear. I'm..." There was a soft intake of breath, and Tiago's hands curled so tightly that his knuckles hurt. "We have an operative down. Samuel Elliot. Dead."

 _Sam_. Tiago closed his eyes, bowing his head. "Sweep the area," he said tiredly, even as he knew that it was too late by now, _Joder_! Why had Q locked down his floor? Those _boys_. 

"Understood," 006 said quietly, even as Moneypenny chimed in, "Sir."

"Moneypenny."

"The off duty members of Q-branch are missing. They've all been taken." 

Tiago took in a deep, sharp breath. "006, find a terminal that's still working. I'm going to walk you through running the top floor's security overrides."

"With all due respect, sir, the building is not yet secure-"

" _Do it!_ " Tiago snarled.

Someone was going to _pay_.

VII.

MI6 was still in chaos by the time James returned, with police everywhere, milling around in confusion. He was shown instantly to M's office, where he found M looking pale with exhaustion, growling at a group of traumatised looking agents before shooing them out.

"Useless," M growled, slumping into his chair as James closed the door. "How much do you know?"

James related his brief conversation with Q, all the way until a long period of silence and then a sudden, painfully loud explosion before he had reached the extraction point. M nodded wearily, rubbing at his eyes.

"They destroyed the servers _and_ the backup on a separate floor. They knew what they were doing." M tapped his fingers on the chair in a staccato rhythm, "Inside job."

James nodded slowly. He had thought so himself. "Did we find the mole?"

"There were several. Whoever it was found and took the families of a select number of MI6 employees. Minor ones. Security officers, admin roster employees. People who might know as part of their routine the layout of the building and the schedule of the week. The compromised employees are being held by the police."

"You don't know who is the culprit?" That was odd. Usually terrorist groups were the first to trumpet their 'achievements', and humiliating MI6 would be a very large trophy to brag about. 

"No. But there was this." Tiago tapped a key on his laptop, and a large image was projected onto the screen along the wall of his office. 

A photograph of the armoury, the lock melted through by something highly corrosive. On the ground, carefully arranged, was the body of one of the Q-branch operatives, his eyes glassy and open, throat cut. Someone had painted the floor with his blood in broad strokes:

 _Think on your sins_. 

James frowned. "Whoever it was knew you personally."

"I have a lot of enemies," Tiago said wearily, though there was murder in his eyes as he looked over the photograph. "I should never have brought Benjamin and the others here with me."

"Sir-"

"In Hong Kong, I knew everyone we employed," M added, ignoring him. "Even the service staff. We were a small operation. I could be careful. We could play with the world and I could still protect them. In London..." M sighed, and he looked older now, careworn. "Once, I asked them to follow me. I promised them that if they did so, they need no longer fear the world."

"What do you need me to do?" James asked, as neutrally as he could; it was jarring to see M like this, vulnerable and exhausted, showing his age. 

"Nothing." M had a series of windows open on his laptop, alternating between three of them, furiously typing. "I'm looking for them."

"Nothing?"

M eyed him coldly, and that too was a bit of a shock, in sharp contrast with M's usual flirtatious overtures. "I can't trust anyone right now, 007. Do what you want, but leave me alone. I need to find my boys."

"With all due respect-"

"And I certainly can't trust," M added quietly, "Someone whom my predecessor has tried to set against me. Dismissed."

"If you don't trust anyone," James tried to keep his calm, "Then why are you still here?"

"Because if whoever it is makes the mistake of coming back for me," M lifted a shoulder, "It will be the last mistake that they'll ever make, and I might need the information that I can get from their bodies."

"I think that you're far too blinded with grief and rage to know your allies from your enemies," James pointed out sharply, clenching his hands. "If you think that I had anything to do with this, you're roundly mistaken."

"If I thought that you had anything to do with this," M corrected, with the same cold calm, "You would already be dead. Leave."

James swallowed his temper, nodding stiffly instead as he let himself out of the office, padding towards the stairwell, even as he got his phone out to call Alec. 

"James." Alec picked up quickly, though he sounded neutral.

"Where are you?"

"Forensics labs, second floor. We're analysing the traces from the explosives and acid. Results pending soon. They're for _his_ eyes only, but I suppose we both have 00 clearance." Alec's carefully flat tone indicated that he'd probably suffered the same brusque treatment from M, and was quite possibly planning on stealing the results just to get a peek.

"Keep me updated. I'm going to follow M when he tries to leave." 

"You think that he'll go after them himself?"

"Wouldn't he? Wouldn't you? He used to be a 00." Old habits had to be hard to break.

Alec sighed. "I'm going to see if I can narrow down the list of suspects from the materials that they used. The security footage wasn't helpful. I'll let you know if I find anything. Then we can go hunting. Just like old times."

"Like old times," James echoed, clenching his hands tightly. As much as he could objectively understand M's dismissal and open distrust, it still rankled.

7.0.

Objectively, Tiago knew that his current behaviour was damaging to MI6, possibly more so than the monumental security breach itself, but he was still angry enough not to care. His eyes burned from exhaustion - he hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours and counting, and he didn't have time to deal with all the petty details like recovery and relocation. And he certainly didn't have the time to go and talk to Downing Street.

Finding Q and the others would have been much easier with MANDALA, but with the localised setup thoroughly destroyed, Tiago couldn't afford to waste hours mocking up a basic rig from their offsite resources, not by himself. The boys didn't have much time left. 

Tiago was all too aware of kidnapping-murder statistics, and it was clear from Sam's death that the intruders would have no compunctions over murdering any of the boys, just to make a statement. They had to be found soon. 

When an unknown number dialled in to his phone, Tiago picked up warily, ready to trace it if necessary. "Who is this?"

"Tiago." The old M sounded unruffled by his wary tone, and Tiago closed his eyes, exhaling explosively.

"I don't have time to talk to you."

"Calm down. Breathe." The old M waited, as Tiago instinctively obeyed, even after the span of years between them - old habits, old dogs - and then she added, quietly, "Better?"

"Not particularly."

"You're exhausted and you're feeling betrayed. Time's slipping out of your hands and you're growing desperate. But you've been trained to handle situations like this. Remember your training."

Tiago snorted, even as he drew his hands off the keyboard of his laptop. "Is this a pep talk, Mummy?"

"I'm not concerned about you," she shot back, as steely as ever, "But I'll be damned if all the work I've put into MI6 is destroyed because the successor I personally chose wasn't ready to wear my mantle."

"How did you hear about this? Bond?"

"I'm retired, not isolated. It wasn't any of the 00s," she added mildly. "Well done. It took me over two months to win them all over." 

"You set 007 against me."

"No, I told him to watch you," the old M corrected briskly. "With good reason, it seems. I thought that responsibility and time would have bred the impulsiveness out of you by now."

"I don't have time for this."

"Listen," she snapped, steel bucking into her tone, "You're M now, not a 00, not Head of HK branch. You have far more responsibilities than the lives of a few operatives. And you can't show favouritism to such a degree. It's a weakness. Don't you understand that?"

"You always showed favouritism," Tiago shot back dryly. "I should know."

"Only to the 00s. And I had my reasons," she replied flatly. "They're far more capable of handling themselves in a situation like this, for one. You're in charge of far more than a group of fractious boys now, Tiago. Think. Use the resources that you have. And don't fuck this up."

"Yes, _Mummy_ ," Tiago drawled, as annoyingly as he could, but She only sniffed and hung up. 

Exhaling, Tiago stared at his laptop, at the code that edged itself up in the command prompt windows, and closed his eyes, marshalling his thoughts. As irritating as it was, the old M was right. If he tried to do this himself, he would not only damage MI6 but possibly make the entire situation counterproductive. MI6's operating procedures might still be a little outdated, but it did have resources that Tiago had no access to normally - contacts, intel from other agencies, others. He was going to have to take command if he wanted to run this ship efficiently, as much as he wanted to sink himself into code and concentrate on nothing else. 

Reaching over for the intercom, he said, "Moneypenny."

"M."

"When the explosives analysis is complete, get 006 and 007. I know they're probably still lurking around in the building. Oh, and tell Tanner," Tiago added, with a glance at his laptop screen, "That in the future, when he has doubts or grievances, to talk to me instead of crying to Mummy. I am M now, not her." 

"Very good, sir," Moneypenny sounded amused, which suggested that Tanner was probably within listening range. Good.

VIII.

James was a little surprised to note that M seemed completely different from just hours ago - he looked composed now, running on neutral, just like the old M, dispassionately in control. The facade wasn't perfect - there was a hard gleam to his eyes and a tense cast to his shoulders, but it was an improvement: he could see Alec visibly relaxing.

"At around three a.m. today, as the both of you already know," M started briskly, when Moneypenny let herself out of the office, "There was a large security breach in MI6, a professional operation carried out with evident planning and forethought. Minor employees of MI6 were compromised, and the outdated nature of most of MI6's existing security measures were taken advantage of."

"We're now officially on a war footing," M added, as Alec nodded, "MI6 will be moved to Churchill's bunker, in time, while a full investigation is compiled. Moneypenny and Tanner are reviewing existing employee files, to try and take measures to ensure that this will not happen again. So. That is one part of it."

"As you are both probably also aware, despite my instructions, the explosives used on Q-branch's floor is a new blend known as RNX, made mostly of nitro-glycerine and RDX, along with a recipe of stabilizers that is top secret. It is not on the black market, and it is in some ways the perfect guerrilla explosive - intended to be stable to handle, no blast cap required, predictable blast radius, odourless, and with an extremely low atomic signature, making it invisible to conventional detection systems. It was made for US military use by Jack Madding of the CIA - their version of Q."

"Madding's dead," 006 cut in. "It was news because it was ironic," he added, when James glanced at him curiously, "Madding's _the_ expert on explosives, and he died because of them. The CIA agent I met in Kashmir half a year ago mentioned it to me. Madding was testing a new blend of HMX, and must have made an error. The resultant explosion took out a block of the labs in Area 51. There wasn't anything left of him to identify. CIA relied on witness testimony from cleaning staff who had seen Madding in the labs fifteen minutes prior to the accident."

"That being so," M said flatly, with a sharp glance at 006 for the interruption, "RNX was still in extensive testing during the time of Madding's death, and after it, it was put on hold. There was a problem with one of the stabilizers that caused the explosive to burn rather than explode half the time."

"You think that Madding staged his death?" James asked.

"Someone did. Remember the Mehran matter, a few months ago?"

"A 'rare explosive' was used," Alec recalled, after a moment's thought. "It was RNX?"

"The CIA just confirmed it. They withheld the information previously, even from us." M made a sharp, irritable gesture. "Tch."

"So the culprit is Kashmiri? Al-Qaeda?" James was surprised. The 00s had all handled anti-terrorism missions during their time, naturally, but it was unusual for Al-Qaeda not to announce responsibility immediately. Terrorist groups thrived on notoriety. 

"Kashmiri was only suspected of masterminding the Mehran attack. In actual fact, my predecessor - and I - believe that it was orchestrated by a different team. A new mercenary group, with military or military intel training, at the least - we've seen their hand in some other attacks. The attack on PNS Mehran was far better planned and organised than any previous attacks. And their access to a stable, usable version of RNX is troubling."

"The CIA, thankfully, aren't totally useless," M continued, "They've been chasing a lead since Mehran, and are now willing to share. 007, I want you to fly to Moscow and meet our CIA contact. He will put you in touch with someone who can get us closer to these mercenaries. If you can find them, learn who employed them against MI6, then terminate them. As to Madding, if he is alive, the CIA would prefer that he is returned intact, but will not be heartbroken if there were... complications."

"Understood," James nodded. 

"006, the members of Q-branch all had electronic devices on them with GPS tracking systems. All of the devices went dead in the Port of Immingham, in the Eastern Jetty. I want you to go there. Our birds have most certainly flown, but if they left on a ship, I want to know which. I have a list of likely vessels that left from Immingham today, and I'm still in the process of narrowing it down. See if you can help."

"Understood," Alec echoed. 

"Good hunting," M said quietly, and the violence was in his eyes even if it wasn't in his tone; James straightened, with a slow breath, as the predator within him stirred.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inter-agency cooperation had never been James' strong point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here's where we segue into Goldeneye for a little, because that was my favourite Brosnan!Bond film, and the sequences with Jack Wade and Zukovsky were awesome.

8.0.

The Eastern Jetty was clean, and what was left of the phones had been crushed to fragments in a pail. Tiago left 006 to the probably tedious and frustrating process of trying to figure out which ship had probably squirreled Q and the others away, and forced himself to sleep for a few hours, curled in a semi-alert doze in the desk chair, dreaming of death.

He woke up to Moneypenny, coffee and a forgettable sandwich, and glanced at the clock. 007 would have just landed in Moscow - hopefully the CIA would have had their operative in place and something could _finally_ go as planned.

Unlike Q and the others, Tiago did in fact value 'old-fashioned' field work, if only because he had spent years learning how to do it until he had become very good at it. There were, in fact, functions that the 00s could do outside of a computer that were far more effective - if only because nothing really could top a face to face meeting - or a face to face _armed_ meeting, as it were. 

Yawning, Tiago called 006 over the intercom. "Report."

006 sounded as neutral as ever. "After looking at the bills of lading and the cargo lists, Endeavour, Pacific Jewel, Argonaute. A tanker, a cruise ship, a cargo ship."

All three ships had been in his shortlist. "Your instincts?"

"Pacific Jewel. Next stops are Madeira, Tortola, Havana. Argonaute is returning to Paris. Endeavour to Houston."

"Havana. Cuba." Tiago pursed his lips, glancing at the laptop screen.

He was going to do some research on the Pacific Jewel, but that was going to take time, especially if their enemy was clever, and was actually on the other, ostensibly harmless ships. On the other hand, 00s - particularly 00s who were older - tended to have excellent instincts for trouble, and reluctantly, Tiago decided to concede the possibility for now. Besides, the CIA could wait for Endeavour in Houston, and as to the Argonaute, Tiago still had some personal friends in the DGSE.

It was tempting to go after the Pacific Jewel himself, take 006 along as back up, or perhaps not at all, walk into the field again, but Tiago forced himself to be objective. He might once have been a good 00, and he prided himself on his aim, but the Great Game suited younger men, and if it was a trap - he didn't want to waste more of his time. Or worse, scare the enemy into murdering another one of the boys. 

"Go to Madeira. Get on that ship."

"Understood."

The moment Tiago shut 006 off, Moneypenny's voice switched over the line. "M, the Intelligence and Security Committee's Chairman wants to see you."

Tiago took in a deep breath, tempted to tell Moneypenny to tell the Chairman to kindly fuck himself, and let it out instead. "When?"

"Now. At his offices."

Tiago stared longingly at his laptop, then he curled his fingers into his chair. "Ready a car for me. And have Tanner check into the records of the Pacific Jewel. Search the paper trails. Get an inventory of the guests and forward it to 006."

"We could arrange for the ship to be delayed at its next destination."

"No. No overt moves until Q and the others are secured." Hopefully, 006 could do that much by himself. "Let's see what the Chairman wants."

"Good luck, sir."

The Chairman, Gareth Mallory, was a neat, prim man with the polished look of a practiced bureaucrat, though there was a touch of steel in the set of his mouth, the carefully blank friendliness of his smile. In a different life, with proper training, Gareth Mallory might have made a fair field agent himself, Tiago thought, and straightened slightly in his seat, inclining his head as Mallory offered him a glass of scotch.

"I won't waste time with small talk," Mallory started off frankly. "The Minister's displeased."

"You can tell her that we are exploring every available possibility."

"Not good enough." Mallory retorted, with a sip of his scotch. "She didn't approve of your predecessor's choice - she thought that it was cronyism. You have no experience with running any major operation - Hong Kong is technically a defunct branch, after all."

"You've always placed bureaucrats or politicians at the head of MI6, people who knew how to balance a budget rather than aim a gun," Tiago summarised neutrally, "And now you think that you've placed a wolf at the driving seat by accident, and you think that the bus is going off the cliff."

"Not particularly-"

"I heard that _you_ were up for the role, _Chairman_ ," Tiago added, just as blandly, "So very sorry."

Mallory sighed. "This isn't over jealousy or injured feelings, M. Rest assured, I respect the old M's choice. I listened to her reasoning when she explained it to the Minister and pushed you for the role. This is about our national security. I want to know what's happening and what you're doing about it, so that I can explain it to the Minister in turn and get her off both our backs."

"The security breaches will be sealed. We're doing a thorough review of the employee files. MI6 will be relocated to the Churchill bunker." 

"Yes, I'm aware of all that," Mallory said impatiently, "I want to know _why_ the attack happened. Why was it so specific? Why kidnap Q-branch? Why destroy the servers rather than try to steal the contents in the drives? "

Tiago stared at Mallory thoughtfully for a moment, weighing up his options, and Mallory added, more irritably, "I'm your ally in this, M. If you don't believe me, call the old M. Ask her." 

"I know about you." Tiago had done a bit of research on the drive in, just to stay in practice. "Squeaky clean government record. Not very ambitious, but lucky. Strong insistence on everything being above ground, clean, legitimate." He bared his teeth lightly. "I don't think that you would have made a good M, Chairman."

Mallory eyed him, unimpressed. "And I agree. Anything else?"

"So _honest_ too," Tiago noted mockingly, and he smiled lazily when Mallory simply glowered at him, finishing his scotch before leaning over to put the glass back on the table.

"Why take Q-branch, M?" Mallory pressed. "Those operatives were young, new to the game. What did they know that could have made them attractive to whoever it was that took them?"

"You think that because they are young that they know nothing?" Tiago asked, his tone pitying. "They are the finest at what they can do. Give them computers and they can change entire economies if they want, steal any secret stored electronically or in cloud storage. Think about that." 

"You're exaggerating the gravity of the situation."

"I wish that I was."

Mallory was the first to look away from the stare, and he exhaled, running his fingers through his hair. "This is a bloody mess."

"I'm aware. And working on it. Rest assured, Chairman," Tiago said evenly, "I will find who did this. In the meantime, if you are really my _ally_ , then hold off the Minister, or anyone else looking to waste my time posturing before me. Let me do my job." 

"You're not a 00 any longer," Mallory noted, though he poured himself more scotch. "I'm afraid that you might want to take a closer look at your customary function as M. Balancing and answering to the powers that be is a necessary aspect of your role."

"Ah," Tiago pushed himself up from his chair, "But I have never been very fond of customs. And," he added, padding over to straighten Mallory's tie, watching as the Chairman stiffened visibly, "I spent more than ten years of my life learning how to... _rebalance_ the powers that be, often in far more difficult situations." Mockingly adjusting Mallory's collar, Tiago smiled thinly, and stepped away. "Let me do my job, and I'll let you do yours. Hm?"

Mallory seemed frozen between shock and outrage, and Tiago inclined his head, turning to leave. As he put his hand on the doorknob, however, the Chairman cleared his throat. "Inform me when you find them."

Tiago glanced over his shoulder - Mallory was composed again, though his eyes were narrowed. Amused, Tiago nodded. Maybe the Chairman had a little spine in him, after all. "Of course, Chairman. Of course."

IX.

Moscow seemed even colder than usual. Bundled up in his coat, James padded out of Domodedovo airport, wishing that he'd thought to wear a scarf. He'd managed to catch a few hours of sleep on the plane, but he was still tired from dodging government militia and mortar fire in Syria.

Lined outside the airport, the American was glaringly obvious - maybe too ostensibly so, and James stared at the stocky, middle-aged man in the coat and the huge furry hat for a long moment before padding over. The man let out a grunt when he saw James, beckoning, and they walked together through the car park to a battered light blue Moskovich that had seen far better days. 

"In London," James said quietly, "April is a spring month."

The man glowered at him. "Yeah? Who are you, the weatherman? For crying out loud, it's _another_ stiff-assed Brit, with your fucking stupid secret codes and passwords. One of these days, you guys are gonna have to learn just to drop it." 

The man turned to open the car, and James grabbed him by the shoulder instead, spinning him around to pin him against the door, pressing the muzzle of his Walther against the man's ribcage, arching an eyebrow. "Again."

"Fine. 'In London, April is a spring month, while in Saint Petersburg, we're freezing our butts off'. Close enough for you?"

"No. Show me the rose."

" _Here_?" 

James pressed the muzzle further, hard enough to make the man wince, then he glanced around furtively and unbuckled his pants, ignoring James' frown as he pushed down the hem far enough to show a fading old rose tattoo, with the word 'Muffy' inked above it. James holstered his gun, saying dryly, "Muffy?"

"Third wife." Jack put his pants back on, and shook James' hand, seemingly not in the least concerned that James had just pulled a gun on him seconds ago. "Jack Wade. CIA."

"James Bond. Stiff-assed Brit." 

Jack snorted. "Here, I'll take your case. No exploding pens or electrozappy devices that I should know about?" 

"No. They don't go for that any longer, I'm told." James let himself into the front passenger seat even as Jack stuffed his bulk into the driver's seat. The poor old Moskovich let out a warning bark and a sputter, but started up eventually when Jack cursed at it and kicked it, and they pulled listlessly out of the parking lot. 

"I heard." Jack eyed him briefly, "Officially, the CIA is sorry about what happened to MI6. Condolences and all that."

"And unofficially?"

"The boss isn't excited about your new boss or your new Q-branch. We've got a long file on the new M, and we've heard about what happened in Belgrade. Still, it's a new line of war," Jack said expansively, "And you and I are turning into relics, Jimbo, that's the hard truth." 

"Oh, we'll still have our uses," James said evenly. "Who are we going to meet?"

"His name is Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky. Ex-SVR agent. Now supposedly a legitimate businessman. Has ties to the Russian Mafia. Walks with a limp."

"Ah. Zukovsky."

"You know him?"

"I gave him that limp," James noted distantly, glancing out of the window. "When he was still in the SVR. I wasn't aware that he left." 

"I think he realized that he could make more money doing errands for the Mafia," Jack looked grudgingly impressed. "This complicates things. I was thinking I could just drop you off at his bar and you could talk to him. He has a reputation for being nominally friendly. But my boss isn't gonna like it too much if you end up dead."

"I'm touched that he cares."

"Not really. But your boss thinks that maybe Madding is still alive, _and_ has been turned, and that's bad news. The CIA doesn't want another scandal, especially not right now." Jack made an obscene gesture as a car swerved around them, blue siren attached and blaring, nearly scraping the Moskovich. "Fucking Russians. This is one of the most fucked up places in the world, and I've been to most. See that? He could run over a baby in a pram if he had a migalka and the police wouldn't even blink."

"We're friends with Russia now," James noted dryly.

"Yeah." Jack exhaled explosively. "Fucking hell. Anyway. Zukovsky. You can't just walk into his bar and talk to him."

"Why not?"

"Why not? What about possibly being repeatedly shot, or gutted, or both, and then getting me into trouble with my boss in the process?"

"I can be very persuasive," James said blandly, "Assuming that he can help me. What do you know about these mercenaries?"

"CIA calls them the Black Dogs," Jack said, as they turned carefully into traffic. "They're an offshoot of Blackwater - you know them, I assume."

"Defense 'contractors', supposedly affiliated with the US military." 

"Yeah. Fancy name for mercs. The Black Dogs are just like Blackwater, except they work for the highest bidder. Anyone. Some time back, during the early days of the Iraq war, they got bored of playing by the book and decided that they could make more money by shooting it up for whoever had the cash - mafia, terrorist groups, third world dictators, whoever. They're made up of the best of Blackwater and more, and we'd never been able to get a handle on them. They choose their own clients. Unusual for mercs. Makes them hard to pin down."

"And Zukovsky knows them?"

"The Solntsevskaya Bratva are one of their clients, and Zukovsky knows the Bratva. That's all we got," Jack admitted. "And it hasn't been for lack of fucking trying."

"It's good enough." 

"Right," Jack glowered at the traffic. "Just try not to get killed. Makes for the worst sort of paperwork, I tell ya. And I hate having to identify bodies."

"Your concern for my well-being is touching, Mister Wade." 

"Get fucking used to it."

Despite his words, James didn't in fact saunter in through the main entrance; ageing spies tended to be cautious creatures, to compensate for their slowing reflexes, and as much as he did like making a grand entrance now and then, it was better to do so with backup and an escape plan. He was going in blind, with no backup, into an ex-SVR agent's home ground, after all. 

This would have been easier with Q, James thought absently, then he smiled a little wryly to himself, as he circled noiselessly around the bouncers standing guard in the car park, heading towards the large rectangular building with the snow-dusted roof at the back of the compound where muffled, blaring music was stemming from. 

He managed to get in through a skylight, though he had to use a knife on the lock, and found himself in a bathroom that looked rather out of place, considering the look of the exterior - tiled with marble, with a stone slate washbench, expensive men's toiletries. It was obvious whose bathroom this probably was, and James settled beside the door to wait.

It was probably an hour or so before the door pushed open, and Zukovsky padded in, light on his feet for a man who had long run into bulk and dissolution, and he froze as James pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the back of his neck.

"Hello, Valentin."

"James Bond." Zukovsky sighed. "Come to finish the job?"

"Actually, this is a social visit."

"If it is, why didn't you use the front door like a normal person?"

"Force of habit," James noted blandly. "I just want you to introduce me to some friends of yours." 

"I have a lot of friends." 

"The Black Dogs, Valentin."

Valentin frowned for a moment, thinking, then he snorted. "Oh. _Them_. Is that what MI6 calls them?"

"What do you call them, then?" 

"They have no name. I like to think of them as 'those murderous bastards'."

"Poetic." 

"I heard they attacked MI6. Clean job. Not bad." 

"That's what I'll like to talk to them about." James smiled thinly. 

"I thought so." Valentin exhaled heavily. "You're out of luck, James. The Black Dogs haven't been taking jobs from the Bratva for a while. They found a new client a few months ago. Now they're exclusive."

"Who would have that kind of money?"

"Many people. Your Queen, for one," Valentin said snidely. "It's just a matter of whether one wants to spend it on them."

"I'll let Her Majesty know about her purchasing power with regards to mercenaries when I next have the chance," James noted dryly. "I need more information about them. How many are there? Who leads the outfit? Where do they operate from?"

"The Bratva doesn't know how many there are in total. Small army, possibly. All ex-Blackwater. Their inner circle, I heard, is mostly a small group of old players from our Great Game. Ex-KGB, ex-CIA, maybe even some ex-MI6. Who knows. People like us who didn't want to retire from playing with the World. They have a boss, but the Bratva doesn't know who he is. We've only dealt with their salesmen. As to where they operate from, ah, that one is a little easier," Valentin smiled. "They work from a train that goes around Russia. They like to keep moving."

"This isn't much to go from." 

"I have the contact details of one of their salesmen. I'll write it down." Slowly, Valentin drew a pen and a scrap of paper from his pockets, scribbling down a name and address, and passing it to James. "Have fun, Mister Bond."

"Thanks for your help." 

"Eh," Valentin ponderously lifted a shoulder, "I don't like these Black Dogs. Maybe I am old fashioned. But I like boundaries, and these people don't have any. They'll set the world on fire if they think that there's money in it. And besides, the Bratva is concerned."

"It is?"

"The new breed of Mafia doesn't like all out war, Mister Bond, and the word on the ground is that the Black Dogs and their new master are up to something that will be bad for business. Why else would they attack MI6? And you see, in a big war, people go out to other countries and shoot other people instead of gambling, taking drugs and whoring at home. Customers die, or are afraid to go out and spend their money. Very annoying."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old readers would recognise my tendency to ramble everywhere D: haha.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec's hobby was explosives. Sometimes James wondered if it was the Cossack blood in him.

9.0.

007 had a relentlessly unsubtle approach to espionage sometimes, it seemed - neither Moneypenny nor Tanner looked remotely surprised when James noted dispassionately over the intercom that he had found the Black Dogs' train through their ground contact and had stopped it by derailing it with a stolen Russian tank.

Only Bond. 

"The CIA have more operatives on the ground in Moscow," James added blithely. "They'll extract the servers from the train and process them."

"Or what's left of them." Tiago had to rub his face with his palm for a moment. So much for not making any overt moves. "Where are you now?"

"At the wreck with the CIA's cleanup team. We don't have Madding, obviously - he can't mix explosives on a moving train - but the CIA's found some old friends."

"What about MI6?"

"None so far." James' tone implied heavily that in his opinion, there was probably at least one old MI6 operative strung into the mess. That could explain how the moles were selected - the defining similarity between the whole group of them was that they had all been working at MI6 for at least five years.

"Moneypenny, bring up the employee files again. Everyone who retired or left MI6 over the last few years. Put tabs on them. Find out where they all are now."

"Yes, M." Moneypenny nodded and let herself out of the office. 

"Get the CIA to bring the servers to MI6. We're closer to Moscow than Langley. I want to have a look at the rigs personally." He'll probably have to make a few calls himself just to slide that along, even if James had been the one to wreck the train in the first place. The Americans could be stubborn. "Anything else?"

"In the control room there was a brochure for a ship. 'The Pacific Jewel'. It was slated to leave Immingham on the same day as the attack." 

"006's already heading to Madeira to board it. It should make port in four days." So Alec's instincts were right after all. That was good to know. 

"There was... one more thing." James said quietly. "A photograph. It was also in the control room. I took a picture of it with my phone - I'm going to send it to you now." 

After a few seconds, a photograph loaded itself onto Tiago's laptop screen, and he sucked in a sharp breath. Laid out on a white sheet was Karl's broken body, bloody and mottled with bruises, with words painted beside shattered fingers:

_I will always be one step behind you._

"They knew that we would come for the train." James noted flatly. 

Tiago forced himself to stay calm, to push down on the welling fury within him, taking a few deep, slow breaths until he was sure that his voice was even again. "Tanner, I'm going to send you a list of people. Find their current locations. Top priority."

Tanner nodded, walking out quickly even as James asked, "Do you know who it is?"

"I will soon." Tiago stared grimly at the bloodied photograph. "That's the message that I used to send to any hacker that I had in my sights. I used to like to see if they would run."

"Ah."

"It was a long time ago," Tiago murmured; he had been younger then, colder, a 00, and it had been fun to play cat and mouse with his prey. Eventually, he had outgrown it - but only when his prey had tried to bite him back; Benjamin and the others had no idea who they were truly dealing with, but amusement at their defiance had turned into a wry sort of respect, and now-

Favouritism was a weakness, was it? "Go to Madeira. Meet up with 006. Get on that ship."

There was a pause, as though James was thinking about possibly saying something else, but instead, there was a neutral, "Understood," as the agent hung up. Tiago tugged the laptop closer to himself, and brought up his old files. He couldn't help but think that there was something that he was overlooking, something that was keeping him several moves behind his faceless enemy, and it unsettled the best of his instincts.

X.

James found Alec slouched in a chair outside a cafe in Madeira, soaking up the wan sunshine, already on his second cup of coffee. Alec glanced up sharply when James sat down, then he nodded and looked back over to the road. "How was Moscow?"

"Explosive."

"You really have to get over your penchant for stealing military-grade weaponised vehicles." 

"Says the person with a love for stealing military-grade explosives."

"Ah," Alec smiled lazily, "I suppose we all need our hobbies." 

"Are you sure that it's the Pacific Jewel?"

"It was more likely than Endeavour or Argonaute. Argonaute's reached Paris - it's clean. CIA are going to intercept Endeavour en-route to Houston, just in case." Alec slouched further in his chair. "But you're right. A cruise ship isn't a good idea for an operation like this. Especially one whose guests check out. That means a hundred and fifty variables, because civilians are difficult to predict."

"Did the harbourmaster have anything to say?"

"No. The Pacific Jewel's made this trip often - about two to three times a year, apparently. Nothing interesting to report. Just herds of British tourists, looking for a bit of sun. Nothing interesting in the manifests, either. The Pacific Jewel's just here to offload its tourists for a day or so and restock. I'm patched in to the local police radio and the coastal guard, just in case."

Enforced downtime while in the middle of a mission was always the hardest; missions were rarely a non-stop sequence of actionable events, after all. 00s often found themselves holed up somewhere, waiting for prey, waiting for instructions, waiting for intel, and often the temptation to do something destructive to let out all the pent-up tension could be too tempting. Most of the 00s smoked; many of them gambled or fucked faceless strangers, anything to burn off energy. 

Alec, however, had the uncanny ability to just switch off and change mental gears, and he could, rather easily, quietly read a book for half a week while waiting for his mission to come to him. James had always envied him that much. Alec switched off after missions, too, turned into something playful and annoying and unrepentantly boyish, and James was never particularly certain which side of Alec was more genuine. It was a way of coping, certainly - he'd seen variations of this in the other 00s - but he preferred those like Tiago, who seemed to have merged with the beast within them, rather than tucking it away during times of peace.

The new M was proving to be _very_ good after all. James liked that. More than liked it, if he had to admit it. This dangerous version of M, self-assured, confident, was far more appealing to James than before, when he seemed merely capricious. It made the beast within James itself wake, made it _hungry_.

He supposed that Q - wherever he was, and hopefully still alive and relatively intact - would appreciate the thought. In many ways, the 00s _were_ attack dogs; after all, they were trained to bite only when told to, and those who preferred to do more, or walk their own way, were put down quickly. And dogs did love having a stable pack leader. 

He took rooms in the same hotel as Alec, found a pretty young thing in the hotel bar, and spent the next couple of days waiting for their assignment to show up by having her during the night and wandering around Madeira in the mornings, watching the sea. Moneypenny checked in on them now and then, but there didn't seem to be much to report. MI6 was being moved, and M was occupied in cracking the encryption on the recovered rigs from Moscow, with some CIA consultants.

The Pacific Jewel docked to no fanfare and a swarm of hungry British tourists, and it seemed like a normal cruise ship; stealing on board was easy enough. The ship would be far too large to search manually; instead, Alec and James broke into the bridge to access the ship's main control terminal. James glanced at the electronic layout of the ship, looking through the larger sections where a group of young men could be securely held without being discovered, but Alec abruptly paused the cycle of the plans, highlighting a cabin.

"Look at that. Usually tourists are fairly quick to head out and explore an island, aren't they? This one's marked occupied. 'Do not disturb'."

"Maybe the occupant's feeling under the weather."

"Look at the cabin number, James."

 _44-20-001_. The calling codes for the United Kingdom, London, and Tiago's 00 number. James exhaled. "I'll take a look. Stay here and check the security feeds." 

The door to 44-20-001 was locked, and James glanced quickly around him before he picked it, drawing his gun and kicking the door open. A cursory glance into the small cabin indicated that James was already far too late to help its occupant. Pressing a finger to his earpiece, he waited, until he heard Moneypenny say, "007."

"I've found Karl Schlitz's body." 

Moneypenny sucked in a soft breath, then, "Anything else?" 

"006 is checking the security feeds. I'll..." James hesitated, as his MI6-issue phone vibrated. Picking it out of his pockets, he frowned at it - no message, no incoming call. "My phone's vibrating. No message or alarm."

"Check the body." 

Closing the cabin door, James searched Karl's body quickly, and finally found what looked like a small silver chip in his shoe. "There's something that looks like Q's pocket distress radio. Yellow and orange buttons."

"That's his two-way radio transceiver," Moneypenny said, her voice lifting a notch in excitement. "I'm going to get M."

James had made it back up to the bridge by the time M's smooth, lightly accented voice cut into their earpieces. "Yellow button, 007."

James pressed it. Nothing. He could hear Tiago's carefully measured breathing in his earpiece, in a forced calm, and just as James was about to suggest that they check through the ship again, there was a tinny, but clear, "Well, bloody finally."

"Q," James exhaled, relieved, and beside him, Alec closed his eyes.

"007. I'm surprised. I was beginning to think that I'd been too subtle after all. The transceivers were made to react with the signature of your phones, in case you managed to lose them, but I wasn't sure if-"

"Moneypenny asked me to check the body."

"Ah." There was a soft breath. "So Karl is dead." 

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"No, when they took him away, I knew that was going to happen. I was just hoping-" Q's voice hitched briefly as he cut himself off, "Where's Mister... Where's M? Is he all right?"

In James' earpiece, M let out a shaky sound, but Alec said, "He's fine. Where are you, Q?"

"If I knew that I would have told you that from the start," Q growled, with a touch of his usual acerbic tongue. "We're in a ship, and we're moving, so we're probably in the middle of the bloody ocean. We were in the cargo section of some other ship at first, but then they took Karl away and sedated the rest of us, and we woke up someplace smaller." 

"We can work with that," James heard M saying, "006, check the Captain's log."

Alec nodded, bringing up the files on the terminal and scanning through them.

"This radio doesn't have a GPS tracking chip. It's still in prototype, and I was trying to figure out where I could fit one in without draining the battery too quickly or making it bulkier. Lucky for us that I didn't," Q continued, "Because everything we had that _did_ have chips on got destroyed. They had a specialised scanner on them. Bastards."

"Have they asked you to do anything?" James asked neutrally, "Tried to force you to work for them?"

"No. They've been clever. If they'd put me - or any of the rest of us - on a computer we would have found a way to triangulate our position and get word to MI6."

"So you aren't aware of why all of you were kidnapped?"

"Unfortunately, no. Our handlers so far are professional mercenaries, veterans - that's all I can tell you about them. They aren't wearing any convenient tags or marks, and if you must know, no, we haven't had any sort of equally convenient made-for-the-movies villain saunter down to our cosy little cell with a white cat in his arms to gloat and tell us his plans," Q noted acidly. "Sorry to disappoint."

"How many of you are left?"

"Seven, including me." Only two deaths so far, then. "And before you ask, we're fine, other than the _inconvenient_ probability that one of us will be taken again over the next couple of days and murdered." 

"We'll find you," James promised, even as Alec said, "They stopped for an hour yesterday. Apparently a Mister Orion transferred to a friend's private yacht along with his luggage, when they happened to cross paths. The Pygmalion."

"Mister Orion," Q repeated wryly, even as M sucked in another breath. "That brings me back."

"You know him?"

"That's the pseud M used to use back when he was hunting people like us by himself. So we're facing one of us. Probably from before we joined up with MI6. That's funny. I didn't think that any of the rest of them could be this good."

"Maybe they learned," James noted dryly, and Q sniffed in disdain. That was a good sign - Q's egocentrism, at least, seemed to be aggressively healthy despite his reduced circumstances.

"I'm going to have to switch off the transceiver to conserve the battery. You can attach yours to your phone, it'll charge itself from that, leave it switched on. If they move us again, I'll let you know." 

"Stay calm. We're coming." Alec said reassuringly.

"All right," Q said, before another chip showed in his evidently self-enforced state of blithe calm - his voice hitched a little and wavered. "They'll pick out another one of us soon, I know it. So be quick."

10.0.

Cracking the password and cleaning up the traps in the servers had been fairly simple. Tiago swept the storage servers a few times, just to ensure that there were no more nasty surprises, then he set up a couple more isolated consoles and left the CIA to the servers' lists of known Black Dog operating locations. He'd already found what he wanted from it, anyway.

The Pygmalion hadn't registered a set course, or booked in any next ports of call, and as such, Tiago had left 006 at Madeira to make further enquiries with the captain and the passengers, while recalling 007 home for a debrief. 

"Your target," Tiago gestured at the large screen when James padded into his office. "Boris Grishenko. Second generation migrant, Russian parents, grew up in Arizona." Tiago added tiredly, stifling a yawn. "When he was nineteen, he began to hack into state government servers. When he was twenty, he had progressed to the CIA. He came to my attention when he tried to look at the joint CIA-MI6 files and tripped my alerts."

"When he received my usual... message, he started to run. Backpacked across America, down to Mexico. Apparently he brokered a protection deal from one of the drug cartels. I caught up with him when he was on his way to Juarez, and dragged him back across the border. I gave him to the Americans. They sent him to Guantanamo Bay. He was twenty-one."

"Seems excessive."

"Ah, but we do love our secrets," Tiago smiled thinly. "If it wasn't for the CIA's interest in him, I would have shot him."

James glanced at the screen, expressionless. "He escaped?"

"There was a... 'security incident' at Guantanamo Bay a year ago. Unreported. Top secret. Grishenko broke out, along with Jamil Al-Rawi and Rustam Dmitiri. It seems that there was a highly localised systems failure in the recreation yards. A helicopter was waiting for them once they cleared the camp. Highly embarrassing for the US Government, I suppose. Small wonder we weren't told."

"Al-Rawi - one of Kashmiri's inner circle men."

"Very good, James. Still, this still doesn't fit the usual modus operandi of an Al-Qaeda operation. Too clean. Too quiet. I think they broke him out, and he did them a favour in return. Maybe they were happy to keep the breakout quiet, in case they could reach any other operatives with the same methods."

"Regardless, Grishenko either controls the Black Dogs now, or he is their 'exclusive' client. Probably the former. The Black Dogs have never taken any 'jobs' attacking the USA or the UK directly before, let alone something so overt."

"It's a long way for a boy from Arizona to come," James noted.

"Torture changes people. Either it breaks them, or it hardens them. Grishenko was already brilliant. Not as smart as Benjamin, but he was very good in his own right. Regardless, he's the most likely probability," Tiago said tiredly. "And his password system matches the one on the servers we recovered from the train. Most hackers like Benjamin use algorithms. Grishenko liked to use obscene slang terms in various languages, converted into binary." 

"Can you trace his location?"

Tiago glanced at his laptop, then back to James. "He's most likely in one of the Black Dog locations listed in the servers. We have a team going through them, there should be a result soon. We're running blind without MANDALA, however, and-"

"And he might not be there at all. What makes you think that he isn't on the ship with Q?"

"If he had, he would have already shown himself, I think. They were rivals at one point. But you are right. I am not sure. He might be different now." Tiago yawned again. "We have a lock on the appearance of the Pygmalion, at least. We should be able to pinpoint it within the next few hours. Depending on where it is, we'll play by ear. I have a program running that's working its way into the Black Dogs' cloud storage system. It should be able to pinpoint Grishenko's location eventually. Once it does, that's where you'll be going. I'll send 006 to the Pygmalion."

"Does it need your constant attention?"

"No, but-"

"Sir," James interrupted, "When did you last sleep?"

Tiago frowned slightly. "Few hours, here and there."

"You look like you're about to collapse. You're going home," James said firmly, "Either you get Tanner to call a car for you, or I'm taking you." 

Tiago grinned, about to reply by way of innuendo, only to find himself yawning instead. "Get me some coffee and I'll be fine." 

"You can't run yourself into the ground over this. You'll be handling operations almost all the time now that you're M. You can't make things personal."

"You sound just like Her."

"She had her insights," James retorted calmly. "Well?"

Tiago weighed his chances - 007 was stubborn, and he seemed to have set his mind on this. There wasn't much else to do that was imperative for now until the Pygmalion or Grishenko were found, and Moneypenny or Tanner could easily issue the directions to 006 or 007. "Get Tanner to call a car." 

Somewhat to his amusement, 007 insisted on riding back with him. Tiago hadn't returned to his new apartment in Mayfair since the situation, but security had already swept it a couple of times since then. He walked past the threshold, heading straight for the liquor cabinet, observing as he went, "There. Nothing blew up. If you want to check the place for terrorists under the carpeting, go ahead." 

James eyed him oddly for a moment, but started to circle the rooms briskly, and Tiago settled down on the armchair with a good scotch. He wasn't aware that he had dozed off until he felt a light touch on his arm, and instinctively, he grabbed for the wrist. James didn't look startled in the least, absolutely unruffled, as he said, with a touch of humour in his tone, "Area secure, M."

It took Tiago's exhausted brain a moment to kick itself into normal processing speed in order to realize what James was getting at, and he drawled, "Maybe I'll need you to tuck me in."

"I don't believe that that's part of my job description, sir," James pointed out, though the humour was still in his tone as he helped Tiago to his feet. 

"Improvise. The 00s are very good at that. I should know." Tiago was a little surprised to realize that his attempts to feign total exhaustion so as to lean heavily against James' warm, bulk was rather less feigned than it was. Hm. So inconvenient.

"Is that an order?" James purred, his breath ticklish and hot against Tiago's cheek, and Tiago chuckled, a little breathlessly. It was a pity that he very likely couldn't follow through anything right now without most likely passing out in the middle of it from weariness. 

"If I was less tired, maybe." 

"Mm. And whose fault is it that you're barely conscious?"

"Well," Tiago said innocently, about to blame Grishenko, or the lack of industrial-strength coffee in MI6, when James pressed him against the doorframe of his bedroom and kissed him, unhurried and practiced; Tiago wasn't tired enough yet to just give - he pressed back with a low growl, nipping, hands clenching into the starched edge of James' collar, colouring the kiss hungry. Dimly, Tiago was vaguely aware of being walked backwards until he was being lowered onto the bed, time crushed still between their mingling breaths, flesh bitten red and kiss-swollen by the time Tiago was pressed onto the sheets. It was really a pity that-

"Sufficiently tucked in, M?" James drawled, a little breathless. 

"This suit is a Richard James," Tiago retorted, "Help me out of it before it creases."

007 laughed, though he helped Tiago out of his suit, even heading over to the wardrobe to hang it up. "That's the worst pickup line that I've ever heard, sir."

" _That_ was an order, not a pickup line," Tiago shot back, though he shifted up and grinned lazily as James helped him with his shoes, "Pay attention, 007."

"Yes, sir," James replied, his smile filthy as anything as he rubbed the flat of his palm teasingly up the arch of Tiago's bared foot, making him bite back a groan.

"You-"

"Think of this as an incentive to take care of yourself," James noted mildly, arranging the shoes at the foot of the bed and leaning up for another biting, bruising kiss.

"Stop nagging me, it's getting boring. Are you going back to MI6?" Tiago asked sleepily. "Someone might have to watch those CIA agents in case they make off with our hardware." 

"Moneypenny's more than capable of doing that," James noted lightly, picking up Tiago's gun hand, turning it up to press fingers over the calluses, the gesture almost uncomfortably intimate, and Tiago would have frowned if he wasn't so tired. "I might check your carpets for terrorists again, just in case."

That made Tiago grin lopsidedly, as he curled on his sheets. "Suit yourself, 007," he replied with a yawn, and when he slept, this time, he dreamt of nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Q wrote himself back into the fic. :/ clever boy.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Journeys end in lovers meeting...

XI.

James had returned to MI6, just in case the program cracked Grishenko's location while M was asleep; and spent the hours eating, having a shower, taking a brief nap in his office, and then restlessly prowling around Moneypenny until she snapped at him.

"Oh, for God's sake, James, go home," Moneypenny growled, darkened hollows already drawn tight around her eyes, "Before I end up _shooting you_."

"You won't hit me."

"Do you want to bet on that?" 

"Moving targets are difficult," James drawled, and from Moneypenny's glare, it was evident that she was seriously contemplating using the Glock in her desk drawer when there was a sudden bubble of chatter in the makeshift control centre. 

The Churchill bunker was a cold, austere set of chambers that reminded James more of a tomb or a rat's warren than an office, and the control centre had been set up in one of the largest chambers, with M's office walled off with glass to the side. James glanced sharply between Moneypenny and Tanner's techs, then up at the large projection screen, where the status bar on M's program had slipped to maximum. There was a sudden, ear-splitting shrill, then a huge photograph filled the screen, to shouts from the techs and a choked sound of horror even from Moneypenny. 

John Douglas, James thought, his training taking over, objectivity erasing instinctive anger and revulsion. Suspended from wire hooks from the ceiling, bled to death. On the ground, another message in blood: 

_Not such a clever boy._

"Wait," James said, clipped, as Tanner made as if to close the image. "Zoom in there." At Tanner's blank, horrified look, James gestured, "Look behind Douglas, to the right. That's a porthole. And part of a coastline. We can narrow down our search for that ship."

"That's not all," Moneypenny was typing furiously, "The program worked. We're zeroing in on a location." The photograph was minimized to a corner, as Tanner directed techs to compare the coastline with maps, replaced by a large global map, a circular mesh shrinking down rapidly over Asia. "Get ready to move, 007."

James nodded tightly, watching the screen avidly as the circle shrunk past Russia, past Mongolia, then abruptly, the map blacked out. James glanced sharply at Moneypenny, who straightened. "The program's been shut down on our end." She typed for a moment, then added, sharply, "It's been sealed by someone with a higher security clearance than mine."

"Try mine," James said curtly, imputing in his password and username, only for the bold 'RESTRICTED' to flash back across Moneypenny's screen. 

"Have we been hacked?" Moneypenny frowned, looking to Tanner in confusion, even as realization hit James all at once, cold and clear. 

"Would M have been alerted if the program had finished running?"

"Probably, through his phone-"

"Does he have another laptop at home?"

"Very likely... you don't think...?"

"He's going after Grishenko by himself," James growled. "Tanner, is the car still at M's flat? Call the driver! Get him to stop!"

"He isn't answering his phone," Tanner said, tense. 

"Trace the chip. See where they're going... no, they have to be going to Heathrow." The circle had shrunk past Europe, after all. "Call the airport. Stop him from leaving."

Moneypenny shot James an uncertain glance, then Tanner, and said, mildly, "007, M can do what he wants. He _is_ M. And he used to be a 00. He's more than capable of handling himself."

"The relevant phrase there is ' _used to_ '," James growled, but Moneypenny merely stared back at him placidly, and after a while, Tanner lowered his hand, glancing at the techs, who stopped nervously staring at each other and bent back to their computers. James sucked in an angry breath, only to catch sight of what Moneypenny was typing on the screen:

 _Stop it, James. You can't undermine M, not now. Go to the airport instead. Follow him if you can find him. I'll call you if he's booked himself onto anything._ At James' scowl, she continued, _Short of sedating him, I doubt you'll change his mind_. 

James could see her point - as much as he didn't like it. "Fine." Turning on his heel, he stalked towards the exit, only to find one of the black cars primed and waiting for him outside, with travel documents and a black visa card. Moneypenny was frighteningly efficient. 

Heathrow airport was a nightmare as usual, and James gave up trying to look for annoying blonde Spanish men rather quickly, waiting impatiently for Moneypenny's call, instead. Time dragged painfully into an hour, and then two, then finally, his phone rang - an unrecognised number.

"Hello?" James said, clipped and cool.

"Jimbo!" Jack Wade's American drawl, in the current context, was intensely irritating.

"Wade, I can't-"

"Listen, Jimbo, I got some CIA friends who told me of your little shouting match up in MI6. Never try to tell your boss what to do. First rule of a promising career in espionage."

"I already _have_ a promising career in espionage," James noted impatiently.

"And so, since you did a big favour for us," Jack continued blithely, ignoring him, "My boss wanted to do a big favour for you. He likes your style, Jimbo! Wish I could have seen them Black Dogs' faces when they saw you in that tank on the tracks, haha! If you ever wanna switch over to this side of the world, just let us know."

"What favour?"

"Remember that big file that I said that we had on your boss? That included a whole list of all the passports he's ever held. Even those that weren't issued by MI6. So, just for your information, a Mister Raoul Silva boarded a flight an hour ago to Hong Kong. Spitting image of your boss. _And_ ," Jack added cheerfully, as James swore, backpedaling to glance at the next flights to Hong Kong, "We got a friend of the CIA right now in Heathrow wot owes us a big favour. Ever wanted to jet to Hong Kong in a private plane?"

"I've never had the chance," James noted dryly, though he smiled. "Jack, I owe you a drink."

"I'll cash it over here in Saint Petersburg, if it's all the same with you. The beer in London tastes like piss," Jack drawled. "Good hunting, Jimbo. Call us if you find Madding."

The plane was beautiful, but James wasn't in the mood to enjoy it, scowling out of the window the whole time, hands clenched over the armrests. He _had_ thought that it was a little suspicious, M ceding control so easily, allowing himself to be coddled. This M wasn't like the last, or any of the ones before him. He was a predator just like the rest of the 00s, and even old ones were still dangerous.

Two hours from landing in Hong Kong, James jerked awake from a light doze from a tinny, "007?" muffled from inside his suit.

"Q?" James pulled out his phone, with the attached transceiver. 

"I'm..." There was a pause, then a shaky breath, then Q cleared his throat, forcing calm into his voice. "I think I'm next. I didn't have time to pass my transceiver to the others. I'm sorry. I hope you find them."

"We're close." James sucked in a slow breath, clenching his jaw. "Are you still on the ship?"

"No. They sedated me. I'm not sure how long I was asleep, but I know where I am. I guess you can probably find my body, at the least." A slight edge caught into Q's voice for a moment before he calmed back down. "I'm in Hong Kong, or actually, an island off the coast of Macau. It's called the Dead City. The locals don't go there, it's considered unlucky, and nobody's sure whether the gas leak that caused the island to be vacated in the first place was real. When we brought MANDALA online, it was one of the first places we explored."

"So you know exactly where you are?"

"I'm on the southeastern side, close to the jetty," Q said promptly, "The large complex behind the huge broken statue. You can't miss it." 

"I'll be there in-" James checked his watch, "Three hours." He wondered whether to tell Q that M was coming, but decided against it - Q's composure was already shaky enough, and James didn't want to start a panic. "Don't worry."

"I'm not! I'm not." Q let out a sharp breath, and there was silence for a moment, then a small, "Can you keep talking to me? Until they come?"

"They won't. I'll find you first."

"I guess..." Q cleared his throat again, then said, more mildly, "I guess you did always look like the reliable sort. Compared to Alec. If he was in a film, or in telly, he'd be the sort of character who'd die spectacularly about halfway through the story. He has that look."

"I'll let him know," James said, amused despite himself. 

"So have you slept with M since I was away?" Q asked, so bluntly that James had to stifle a cough. 

"No. Very nearly, if you must know."

"Oh, spare me the details," Q muttered, sounding incredibly put out. "God. I thought age was meant to put a damper on the male libido."

"Actually he passed out from exhaustion before we even really started. He's been worried."

"I guess he would be." Q murmured, with a sigh. "It must have been awful."

"Worse for the lot of you."

"Oh really? I wasn't aware of that fact," Q said tartly, before his tone faded back to neutral, "We caused him a lot of trouble when we first started working for MI6. We wouldn't heed authorisation levels, we hacked other governments for fun, played pranks on the other operatives, things like that. We weren't very good for that old bitch's blood pressure. But she never tried to push him to get rid of us. She told me why, once."

"She did?"

"It was more of an offhand remark. Mister Rodriguez was away in Tibet, and she'd just caught us stealing diplomatic cables from the Japanese embassy. She gave us a piece of her mind, and then she said that if it wasn't for the fact that we were the only people in the world whom Mister Rodriguez cared for that he hadn't been predisposed to do so under his 00 training, she would have already tried to drown the lot of us in the South China sea." There was a pause, then a quiet, "It was funnier then."

So something had stabilized the predator in Tiago, helped the human side of him to tame it. Small wonder that he was so attached to Q and the others. James exhaled. "It would have been. Tell me about your time in Hong Kong." 

Q was detailing an increasingly unlikely series of hacking antics involving the Burmese government when he abruptly cut himself off, with a hushed, "I think I hear someone coming... I see the guards. Goodbye, 007. Thanks for keeping me company. Tell M that I wasn't afraid at the end, would you?"

"Q-" James swore harshly as he heard the faint rasp of Q shutting off the transceiver, and checked his watch. One hour to landing - damn it all!

And MI6 only had a skeletal staff in Hong Kong... biting off another curse, James checked his phone and dialled the number that Jack Wade had called him from. "Wade."

"Hey, Jimbo. Wassup? Still on the plane?"

"I need another favour."

The CIA's black speedboat was blisteringly fast, but James was all too aware that he was probably already too late to save Q. On the other hand, he might still be in time to catch up with M and prevent the day from becoming a total disaster. Circling to the shadow of the island, James noted another speedboat that had been cavalierly run up onto the ground, a short walk from the jetty, and he aimed his speedboat there.

Disembarking onto the rubble, he glanced at the white speedboat. The motor was still running, and the sides of the boat hadn't yet fully dried. 

Tiago. 

Drawing his Walther and attaching the suppressor to it, James padded silently up to the first building on the edge of the beach, listening for guards. Some sort of marching anthem in Mandarin was playing over speakers set up against dusty lampposts, possibly postwar propaganda, and despite himself, James smirked. Alec was going to kick himself for missing this. This haunted-looking island of rubble, including its ridiculous soundtrack, would be exactly his flavour of fun. 

He managed to sneak up on and break the neck of the first guard he chanced across, dragging the body away to hide it behind a shattered bar counter, padding into the large complex he had seen when he had turned the speedboat around the island. Stealth and a bit of luck took care of the next patrol, and he followed the background hum of machines, probably computers, loud even against the idiotic anthem, padding quietly up the stairs. 

The next patrol didn't go so well; James managed to break the neck of the first, shocked guard, but had to struggle with the next as the man drew his pistol, slamming the guard's wrist against the cracked wall until he dropped it. Headbutting the guard to stun him, James kicked out his knees, then slammed the heel of his foot into the guard's neck, breaking it. Taking a slow breath to calm the beast back down, James continued his ascent.

The stairwell ended in a large, sterile computer room that vaguely resembled the set up that had been destroyed at Q-branch, if smaller. One man sat at a computer desk, surrounded by monitors, hunched over a keyboard and typing furiously. James glanced at the monitors, frowning - two showed feeds from a changing series of cameras, and it took James a moment to recognise Guantanamo Bay.

Padding silently up behind the man, James nearly flinched when the man abruptly whooped, punching his hands up into the air. "I am _invincible_!" 

"Boris Grishenko?" James asked mildly. The man - Grishenko - turned, instinctively, with a frown, and James smiled thinly as he put a bullet between his eyes. "Not _that_ invincible." 

He glanced at the screens again, then frowned at the monitor on the bottom right - a view of the outside, of the large broken statue that Q had mentioned. Bound with his hands behind his back, leaning against the stone, was M.

Three metres away, a guard held Q at gunpoint. And sauntering around Q, hands flickering in playful animation, was _Alec_.

11.0.

Tiago had to be growing old. He should have listened to his instincts, rusty as they were, done another check of the facts. In a way, this was painfully obvious. Which MI6 operatives had all-hours access to MI6? Other than Madding, how many people left in the world had the expertise to perfect RNX? How many people in the world would have the experience to direct perfect sting operations, like the one in Mehran, and the one in MI6 itself?

On one hand, Tiago supposed that the CIA was probably going to be relieved that Madding was really accidentally dead. On the other hand, statistically, Tiago supposed that he would be joining the late CIA expert soon.

He had turned himself in when he saw that Alec had Q. Years ago, a younger, colder Tiago would have waited, possibly killed Alec, lost Q, reported in a casualty to MI6, leaving Q as a footnote in a report. Now, he was old, and sentimental, and the only thing separating him from death seemed to be Alec's penchant for dramatics and Q's stunned disbelief. 

"I don't understand why you're doing this," Q sounded plaintive - jarring coming from the usually self-assured boy.

"You could ask James, or even M here, darling," Alec drawled, "Ask them how hard it is for a 00 to switch off during downtime. Most of us drink, or do drugs, fuck easy women or men, anything to keep the balance. I let off steam more... creatively. And it's certainly paid far better than MI6 ever has."

"But you seemed to _like_ MI6."

"It has its benefits," Alec drawled, with a pointed and sidelong glance at Q, "But I suppose it was a bit of fun that always had to end sooner or later. Somewhere along the line, heading the so-called Black Dogs became rather more entertaining than MI6 ever was. It's an old institution, you see, headed by old men - or women. They pretend at invulnerability, at being all-knowing, but they're all frail. Politicians. Bureaucrats. A little blind to the cards they have on hand."

"But our new M... hn. I think he would have found out about me sooner or later. So once I heard about the old M's most likely choice of successor, months ago, I thought to act first. Why not? The Black Dogs would take on a new client, one that had been after our help for a while. I could wipe my hands of MI6 and make a large contract at the same time. Grishenko would have his revenge on Tiago here, and I could leave... creatively. The resulting chaos from Grishenko's plans would eat up half the world, and the Black Dogs would have a lot of business to choose from." 

Tiago didn't like the oddly speculative glance that Alec shot him, but he kept his peace, still thinking of possible escape situations. The circumstances weren't particularly positive.

"They try to train the 00s to obey the Ms. Sort of a... conditioned training. I see he's already done it to you, more's the pity. But speaking of Grishenko, I suppose we've wasted enough time talking. I might as well start with the client's request." Alec gestured at one of the guards, and Q frowned as the guard poured a shot of scotch from a bottle, walking over to balance it on Tiago's head before stepping away, the glass cool and hard against his skull. "A 1979 scotch. M's favourite, I presume."

"I prefer the 1981," Tiago noted calmly.

"Good! You see," Alec glanced over at Q, "00 training. He's not the least bit afraid. Being afraid is irrelevant when you're under pressure. That's one of the first things we learn." Q flinched, startled, as Alec reached over to the side table and pressed a percussion pistol into his hands, curling his fingers around it and aiming it up. "Grishenko wanted me to play a game with you, Q, to see who'll be the first to knock that glass of scotch off. Winner gets to ask the loser for a favour. I'll be a sport, and let you try first."

"Where's Grishenko?"

"Sadly, he doesn't really have the stomach for blood. Bad memories, I hear. But he did leave rather specific instructions. Go on."

Q blinked rapidly, the pistol dipping a fraction, too heavy for his hands, his eyes wide. "I don't know how to shoot."

"Soft hands. I saw." Alec's smile was lazy. "It's not difficult, not like your computers. You just point, thumb the safety, and pull the trigger. Easy." 

"I can't," Q said, his breath hitching, "Alec, please." 

"Oh, I insist. Client's instructions, I'm afraid." The guard with the Glock levelled at Q's head nudged his skull with it, making Q flinch and startle. "In your time."

Q's lips thinned, even as Tiago took in a breath. "Go on, Benjamin," he said, as mildly as he could. 

"I can't."

"Lock your wrist. Use the sights. Deep breath." 

"Lower the gun, Q." 007's voice echoed from somewhere in the complex behind them. "Alec, I'm here with the CIA. You have five minutes to leave the island."

"Bullshit, James," Alec drawled, "You never liked working with the CIA."

"Grishenko's dead, Alec. Four minutes."

Alec glanced over at a guard, who padded off silently, and he took the percussion pistol away from Q, glancing back around the complex, studying potential vantage points. After a moment, the guard returned, with a slight nod, and Alec sighed. "James. You were always so very good at ruining my fun." 

"So sorry."

"Since we're not about to get paid, I suppose there's no point in staying around," Alec decided, then he leaned over to press a quick, hard kiss on Q's mouth, ignoring his squeak, and padded under the safety of cover. "I know you're lying about the CIA, James. But I'll let you off this time, for old times. _Do svidania, moia lubov_ , Benjamin. Next time, try not to repeat yourself more than twice. It starts to become painfully obvious that you're stalling." There was a quick, knowing smile before Alec faded into the shadows. 

"Asshole," Q muttered, though he stumbled quickly over to Tiago, to undo the rope binding his wrists, grabbing and flinging the glass of scotch off Tiago's head, then he hugged Tiago tightly when Tiago's hands were free. Murmuring something that he hoped was soothing, Tiago patted Q's shoulders, feeling a little dazed, glancing into the shadows where Alec and the Black Dogs had gone. Maybe he wasn't the only one getting sentimental. 

"M," James emerged eventually into sight, padding out over the rubble towards them. 

"You said three hours, 007. You're late," Q snapped, without looking up. 

"The welcoming party wasn't very helpful." James said mildly. "Moneypenny located the Pygmalion. The ship's secure. Five survivors from Q-branch."

"Good." Tiago tensed, at the memory of John's photograph, then he forced himself to relax. "Grishenko was hacking into the Guantanamo Bay security release systems. He wants to start a riot. Secure the release of all the cellmates. Single-handedly revitalize terrorism, or so he said. There were Black Dogs waiting in Camp Justice, disguised as journalists. I'm going to have to make a few calls. Q, get on Grishenko's terminal and see if you can undo the damage."

"All right." Q's arms curled tightly for a moment longer before he pulled away, adjusting his glasses, turning to head back into the complex. 

"Give me your phone, 007. Mine was destroyed."

James wordlessly handed his phone over, though the hot glance that he shot Tiago behind Q's back was angry. Tiago bit down on a sigh. He was going to have to work on that later - after defusing the situation at Guantanamo.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One man's predator is-

XII.

James had slipped away when Tiago had gotten swallowed up in the somewhat disorganised chaos at MI6 on their return, in a black mood. Habit had him finish a written report anyway, if tersely, and he handed it to Moneypenny before taking his usual stipend of leave, on the spot. He drank at the wine bar near his apartment until his training forced him to stop, and he was eyeing the wine bar's crop of possibly available women - or men - when a warm palm slipped lightly over the small of his back.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," Tiago drawled, ticklish and intimate against his ear, and even as James relaxed instinctively against his confident touch, he scowled.

"Sir."

"We're off duty. Use my name." Tiago glanced at his glass as he pulled himself up on the bar stool beside him, the brush of his thigh against James' warm and inviting. "Not drinking scotch?"

"No stomach for it today." James admitted. Not after seeing Alec's guard balance that fucking shot glass on Tiago's head, seeing Q's pistol shake as he pointed it in Tiago's direction. It had been painfully obvious that Q had never used a gun before, and James had forced himself to gamble when instinct and training had told him to wait for a better opportunity. 

"I suppose not," Tiago glanced at him soberly, for a long moment. "The decisions I made today were my right to make, James."

"They were fucking stupid ones, _Tiago_."

"Ah, well, now and then, I like to gamble," Tiago lifted a shoulder, clearly unrepentant about it all. "That photograph of John... it made me so angry. I did not know that Benjamin would be there. Maybe I would have done things differently."

"Called backup, at the very least?"

"Oh," Tiago bared his teeth slightly, "You know about us and our dislike for backup." 

James knew all very well - Alec was probably the only other 00 he could ever tolerate hunting together with - and the thought of _that_ soured him further. He drank, staring at his glass, and Tiago added, soberly, "I am sorry about Alec."

"Why?" James asked, startled, glancing at Tiago. "He's a traitor. He tried to kill you."

"I am not sorry _for_ him," Tiago pointed out. "I'm sorry that you lost a friend."

James wanted to snap at that, to sneer, but he drank instead, slowly, this time, rolling the taste of the wine in his mouth. This had felt worse than Vesper, in a way, or maybe because the betrayal was still raw, still so unexpected. Alec had been with him since _Eton_. James had always felt as though he would know Alec forever, that they'll end up dying someday when they were older and slower, in a ditch in Siberia or somewhere hopefully more exotic, still bickering even with their last breaths; or somehow miraculously survive to retirement, and become two crabby old men lingering around MI6, annoying the newer and newer generations of 00s. 

"Are you going to send me after him?" James asked, instead, annoyed that his voice came out unsteady, and Tiago glanced at him, as though startled.

"No. Not you. If I have to, one of the other 00s. But I think for now we have better things to do." 

That sounded far too much like pity for James' liking, but he said nothing, until Tiago added, "He could have killed us if he really wanted to. Before you even reached the island."

That much had been obvious. "He killed three of the Q-branch operatives."

"His men did, under Grishenko's orders. Which," Tiago admitted, "Doesn't change the fact that I'll shoot him for it if I see him again, but the hatred in all those murders, that was Grishenko's. Guantanamo broke much of him. He hated not only me - but the ones that I spared. Benjamin and the others. He wanted to destroy it all. Revenge himself on me while helping those who had helped him."

"Alec's still a traitor."

"That he is." Tiago hooked James' wineglass away from him, draining it and placing the glass back on the counter, "But there are big problems, and there are small problems, and I think for now I wouldn't be too concerned about Alec. Get up, James. Let's get you home." 

The sharp cold of the London night sobered James up by the time he reached his apartment, made him far too aware of Tiago's warm presence beside him, a step too close to be anything but intimate, ignoring the occasional glances of passers-by. James found that he didn't quite care, curious instead of wary, then hungry by the time he was fumbling his key into the apartment door, when he felt Tiago press a palm against the small of his back again, stroking up lightly over his spine. 

Growing impatiently, James pinned Tiago against the door the moment they were alone in the apartment, demanding a kiss, and it was all teeth and clawing fingers, the violence of it all in a heady thrum under his growing lust. He kissed Tiago until he had the older man squirming under his hands, moaning and breathless, his sleek clothes rumpled, rucking his hands up under Tiago's pale blue shirt to greedily rub his palms up lean muscle. 

"James, wait," Tiago gasped, then growled, "No, no, no, don't you _dare_ -" when James set his fists in Tiago's shirt and _pulled_ , buttons pinging free against the wall to lose themselves in the carpet. Tiago bit him hard enough to draw blood when James kissed him again, but James merely licked the coppery taste deep into Tiago's mouth until long fingers clenched over the back of his neck, a mewl worming loose between abused lips. 

" _Puta madre_ ," Tiago muttered, trying to inspect his shirt, only to yelp and buck against James as teeth closed over his neck, under his collar.

"Pay attention, Tiago."

"You'll regret that," Tiago retorted instead, though he stiffened with a low gasp as James worried an old scar that ran just over his collarbone to his ribs. James hissed as warm hands squeezed his arse appreciatively, then Tiago purred, velvet again, "Bedroom?"

James squinted briefly over his shoulder. "Too far."

" _James_ ," Tiago scowled, but James was licking back into his mouth, swallowing the protests, stumbling them both back, trying to at least aim for the couch, only to yelp as Tiago kicked a heel against his knees, forcing him off balance. He rolled with the fall, instinctively, jerked out of the hand that went for his arm, and they ended up wrestling on the carpet, growling, their kisses growing bruising again and bloody, _intoxicating_. Eventually, Tiago managed to pin James under him, his grin sharp with triumph as he shrugged off his ruined shirt and coat, gritting his teeth as James merely answered with a filthy smile and a roll of his hips. Under his sleek clothes, Tiago evidently kept himself fit - probably also force of habit - his frame marked here and there with scars that James was eager to learn.

"How do you want this to go?" James asked roughly, setting his palms over Tiago's hips, watching greedily as long fingers worked first on Tiago's belt, then James', tossing the leather aside. 

"Mm." Tiago raked him with a searing, possessive glance, "I'm still thinking." 

"Hurry up," James advised breathlessly, as Tiago unbuttoned his shirt, batting away James' hands when he tried to help; eventually, he lay back and waited, feeling as though he was being unravelled, inch by inch, under a stare that seemed to burn by the time his shirt was pushed off his shoulders, and when they kissed this time it was more like marking, sore and sharp with copper and wine, God, James was dizzy and panting for it, almost ready to beg, and they weren't even naked. 

"I want to fuck all that arrogance out of you," Tiago whispered into his ear, following it with a lingering, slow lap over the shell, "You can lie back and think of England, if you like."

"What makes you think that I won't enjoy that?"

"Oh, Mister _Bond_ ," Tiago drawled, though his eyes were gleaming and hard with lust as he leaned back up to take his mouth again, fumbling with James' pants and his boxers just as James reached back down, and somehow they managed to kick off the rest of their clothes, Tiago's back arching greedily under James' hands as they clawed down his back, digging new scars over old ones. 

Tiago had come prepared - and as much as James smirked when Tiago dug the packet of lube and a condom out of his jacket pocket, he _was_ relieved - there was really no way they would have made it to the bedroom, not with the violence in James' mood and the answering echo in Tiago's, and he merely clenched his teeth over a hiss as the first slicked finger pushed confidently into him. 

It had been a long time since he had done this, if only because women were easier in many ways, less troublesome in some countries to explain, and he forced himself to calm down, to relax, even as lips trailed distracting kisses over his pulse, less so like a lover's caress than a predator having a taste, and his heart was quickening, his blood felt hot in his veins, and this time, when he dug his nails into Tiago's back, there was a low, liquid snarl against his jaw. The second finger _hurt_ , and James moaned, already wanting more. 

Tiago was cursing in Spanish by the time he rolled on the condom, and James laughed, harsh and low, drunk on the violence as Tiago unceremoniously balled up James' suit jacket and shoved it under his hips, clenching fingers into hip bones as he pushed into James in a gritty, hot shove that had more of pain than pleasure. James pushed his heels against Tiago's back, trying to force him deeper, teeth bared, hands clenched on the carpet, and he shuddered and groaned when Tiago finally pushed all the way in, his body wild with pain and wanting more, their gasps hoarse and filthy in the space between them as Tiago started marking a trail up James' bicep to the arch of his neck. 

Pain ebbed far too slowly into the deliciously uncertain ebb of pleasure, the sense of fullness growing satisfying rather than intrusive, and when James rolled his hips, Tiago tensed above him. "Well?" James challenged, his voice rusty from want, and he could barely pick out the hard gleam of Tiago's answering glance and the brilliant arc of bared teeth before Tiago pulled back and thrust back deep, the sound of their bodies arching to meet obscene and lewd, God; Tiago's measured thrusts lasted until he pushed against something in James that coloured his voice desperate, and then his pace grew savage.

James knew he was going to bruise in the morning, his shoulders and back scraped raw from the carpet even as he kicked his heels against Tiago's back to urge him faster, snarling as Tiago merely laughed and bent to brace a palm against his shoulder, his free hand reaching down to form a tight fist over James' cock, a touch too dry, almost painful as he pulled, and James was shouting, his head snapping back, spilling thickly over Tiago's elegant fingers. 

Tiago growled in response, muttering something rough and incoherent, rolling his hips shallowly and waiting until James was boneless, then he cant his hips forward, shaky and out of rhythm, before stiffening and clenching his free hand tight over James' shoulder.

"I liked that shirt," Tiago complained later, when James managed to get them cleaned up and into bed, even on shaky legs, pleasantly sore. "It was Prada, you savage."

"I'll get you another one." 

Tiago eyed him suspiciously, but he conceded a kiss easily enough when James licked into his mouth, relaxing when James swept a palm lazily over his waist, over the oldest scar, a pale line that rode over his hip to the curve of his thigh, and as he traced it, Tiago made a low, rumbling sound in his throat, not quite challenge, not quite contentment, and pulled James over for another kiss.

12.0.

"You look like you kissed a bulldog," Q told Tiago unmercifully the next day, when Tiago had called Q in to discuss the costs of refitting - yet again - Q-branch, thanks to the explosives.

"Where did all those roses come from?" Tiago asked by way of retort, and smirked when Q reddened. 

"It seems that I'm getting stalked by my kidnapper." 

"Still being stalked," Tiago corrected absently. 

"His mercenaries killed John and the others," Q glowered, "Once I triangulate his location I'm going to order a nuclear strike on him. I'll hack into the United States High Command if I have to." 

Tiago grimaced, unable to tell whether Q was exaggerating or truly that furious. "As much as I'll like to get my hands on the Black Dogs, that's probably disproportionate."

Q seemed to give this some due thought. "What about a drone strike? A small one?"

"You can have a _small_ drone strike?" 

"Also," Q added mulishly, "His minions destroyed MANDALA. We have a backup in cloud storage, but we're still going to need a new rig, and that battered thing that 007 threw a tank at isn't going to work. I refuse to work on anything store bought. No Dells."

"I'll talk to the Minister later this afternoon," Tiago said soothingly, just as James sauntered into his office, nodding at Q as he made a face at the matching damage on James' lush mouth.

"Good God, what were the both of you trying to do? Eat each other?"

"Well," James drawled, just as Q realized what he had just said and flushed in irritation. 

"Honestly, M. You have no taste whatsoever. Haven't you read his file? 007 has a penchant for women with names like 'Honey Goodhead' and 'Pussy Galore'. I'm surprised that he doesn't have diseases."

"I could introduce you to some of them if you like," James suggested mildly, and Q shot him a look of horrified disdain. 

"At least try not to do anything in the office."

"Seems to be a shame not to use a soundproof office with opaque glass," Tiago said innocently, if only to watch Q sputter and storm out. At least the boys seemed to be recovering well, even if they were more subdued than usual - and it was good to see that Q seemed to be visibly calmer than he was yesterday, refusing to take medical leave. Something about having to make sure that Tiago didn't try to 'foist off' a 'sub-par' rig on Q-branch, apparently. The boys had no faith sometimes. 

It had taken hours to settle the residual chaos at MI6, chase out the CIA agents lingering around the rigs, convince Q and the others to take the mandatory psych testing and counselling seriously, talk to Downing Street _and_ the Chairman, and it was at some unholy hour in the morning by the time Tiago finally got around to looking for James, in a foul mood and still too buzzed from adrenaline to rest. It had been... educational. Exhilarating, certainly. He'd certainly forgotten what it was like to dance with another hunter. 

"You asked for me?" James noted, his tone neutral, although there was still that lovely lazy curiosity in his eyes, and Tiago picked up the mission folder marked _Confidential_ on his desk, circling over to tap the flat of it against James' chest. 

"Ready to get to work, 007?"

"With pleasure, M," James purred now, the heat ebbing into velvet, as he leaned over to brush a kiss with just enough hunger in it to tease against Tiago's lips, "With pleasure."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks everyone for reading! I never meant for this fic to run as long as it did... ^^;; Hope you guys enjoyed that.
> 
> Small 006Q addon [[here](http://manic-intent.tumblr.com/post/37254273358/for-beingevil-and-the-other-people-who-wanted-a)] and a lovely 006Q graphic by thimble [[here](http://asoftermi6.tumblr.com/post/37209288692/skyfall-crossovers-done-right-alec-trevelyan-q)] :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the high and not the pill](https://archiveofourown.org/works/585170) by [thimble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble)




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